Azerbaijan says peace deal with Armenia 'impossible' while Yerevan's Constitution is unchanged

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said Thursday that concluding a peace deal with Armenia is "impossible" while Yerevan’s Constitution remains unchanged.

“It is simply impossible to conclude a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan while the current constitution of Armenia remains unchanged,” Aliyev said at a meeting with parliament speakers of the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic States in Baku.

Expressing that the topic of Armenia’s territorial claims against Azerbaijan and Türkiye is one of several open issues remaining in the peace agreement discussed between Baku and Yerevan, Aliyev said his country never had any territorial claims against any country, including Armenia.

“They must completely abandon the ideas of revanchism, and we see that such ideas exist not only in the opposition, but also in the government. All these issues, of course, need to be clarified and regulated,” he said.

Aliyev also indicated that Azerbaijan proposed to Armenia to jointly apply to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to cancel the OSCE Minsk Group because it is “not functioning now.”

“We will not de facto allow it to operate. It remains for it to be canceled de jure - legally, and this will show how sincere Armenia is. If Armenia prefers to maintain the Minsk Group, then their territorial claims against us will continue,” he said.

Aliyev added that Armenia’s recent return of four border villages in Azerbaijan shows that issues between the two countries can be resolved peacefully through negotiations.

“If Armenia had listened to our words in 2020 and returned our lands peacefully, there would be no need for the Second Karabakh War and the anti-terrorist operation. That is, it should be a lesson for them, and I see that they, as they say, draw conclusions from that lesson,” he said.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​