Lavrov: Azerbaijan ready to sign peace deal on Russian soil

PanARMENIAN.Net - Baku is ready to sign an agreement with Yerevan on Russian territory, Yerevan’s position is unknown, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Thursday, January 18, RIA Novosti reports.

“It is a fact that Western colleagues want a peace treaty (Armenia and Azerbaijan) to be signed only on their territory. That Azerbaijan is ready to sign it on Russian territory, where efforts to end the conflict and build an entire system of interaction to resolve all issues actually began, is also a fact,” Lavrov told a press conference.

“I don’t know how ready Yerevan is for this, although corresponding signals have long been sent to the Armenian capital.”

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said earlier that Baku categorically rejects Yerevan’s proposal that the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border should be carried out on the basis of maps from 1975.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan said in late December that the peace treaty should contain a concrete mechanism for delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border such as Soviet military maps printed in the 1970s. Back then, his Azerbaijani counterpart insisted on delinking the border issue from the treaty. He also said that the signing of the treaty depends on the “political will” of the Armenian side.