Armenia parliament vice-speaker: Azerbaijan is not making sufficient efforts to reach agreement on peace treaty

After the events of Nagorno-Karabakh last year, Armenia and Azerbaijan did not have meetings at the level of the leaders and the heads of foreign affairs departments of the two countries, but the parties continued to exchange comments on the draft peace treaty. The meeting of the heads of state in Munich is a positive progress. The deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia, Ruben Rubinyan, on Friday stated this at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, noting that a meeting between the FMs of Armenia and Azerbaijan took place two days ago.

"In recent years, Armenia and Azerbaijan have been able to reach—on various platforms—an agreement on the fundamental principles of peace. What are those principles? This is a reaffirmation of territorial integrity based on the Almaty declaration [in 1991]. I want to remind that this declaration was adopted by the two post-Soviet countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The second principle on which we have agreed is the delimitation of the state border between Armenia and Azerbaijan—based on this declaration.

And one more important matter: we [i.e. Armenia] have said that all regional communications will be supported on the basis of the principles of law, equality, and jurisdiction. We believe that if we can accommodate the already-existing principles in the peace talks, then we can very well achieve peace; and I believe we can do it quite quickly. Sadly, I cannot say that we have been able to do this so far. From our side, we are doing everything possible to reflect the principles of the Almaty treaty, but we do not see sufficient efforts on the part of Azerbaijan. We hope that we will be able to get the necessary results," added the deputy speaker of the Armenian parliament.