A senior Azerbaijani official stated Thursday that Azerbaijan and Armenia reside in a state of “actual peace” and rebuilding commerce ties after many years of battle, however that Baku won’t signal a last treaty till Armenia strips language from its structure that Azerbaijan regards as a territorial declare.
Hikmet Hajiyev, an assistant to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and head of his overseas coverage division, made the feedback in an interview with Reuters on the sidelines of a discussion board in Shusha. He described the present relationship as real relatively than merely declared on paper, pointing to rising direct contacts between the 2 governments and rising provides of Azerbaijani oil merchandise to Armenia.
The sticking level is the preamble of Armenia’s structure, which references a Soviet-era declaration calling for the unification of Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous area inside Soviet Azerbaijan. Hajiyev stated how Armenia removes that language is as much as Yerevan, whether or not by means of a brand new structure or one other authorized mechanism, however that the provisions themselves should go earlier than a treaty may be signed. Aliyev made an identical demand ultimately 12 months’s White Home summit, saying a peace treaty could possibly be signed “at any time” as soon as Armenia’s structure was amended accordingly.
Nagorno-Karabakh had de facto independence below an ethnically Armenian administration for 3 many years earlier than Azerbaijan retook the territory in a lightning offensive in September 2023, prompting most of its roughly 100,000 residents to flee to Armenia. The 2 international locations had fought intermittently because the late Nineteen Eighties over the mountainous enclave earlier than reaching a preliminary, U.S.-brokered peace settlement on the White Home on Aug. 8, 2025, when President Donald Trump hosted Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan for the initialing of a 17-article draft treaty. Azerbaijan and Armenia collectively requested the OSCE that day to dissolve its Russia-led Minsk Group, the physique that had mediated the battle for many years; the OSCE formally closed the group weeks later, in September.
The identical summit produced an settlement on the Trump Route for Worldwide Peace and Prosperity, a roughly 43-kilometer hall that might cross southern Armenia to attach mainland Azerbaijan with its Nakhchivan exclave and, past it, Turkey. Below the association, the hall would stay Armenian sovereign territory ruled by Armenian regulation, however Washington would maintain unique growth rights for 99 years, subleasing the land to a consortium anticipated to construct rail, fiber-optic and pipeline infrastructure alongside the route. Hajiyev stated Azerbaijan had acquired “critical and optimistic alerts” from the USA that development may start this autumn, and that infrastructure on Azerbaijan’s facet, in its southwestern Zangilan area, can be largely completed by the top of 2026, positioning it to attach with deliberate work in Armenia and Turkey. Alongside the hall settlement, Azerbaijan’s state oil firm SOCAR signed a memorandum of understanding with ExxonMobil, whereas Armenia struck a separate set of agreements with Washington on power, transportation and artificial-intelligence cooperation below a program Yerevan has branded its “Crossroads of the World” initiative.
Pashinyan has stated he needs to carry a referendum on a brand new Armenian structure, with a draft to be printed by the top of this 12 months. His Civil Contract celebration lacks the parliamentary supermajority wanted to name that referendum by itself, and it stays unclear whether or not opposition lawmakers, many aligned with Russia, would help it. Hajiyev stated publishing a draft wouldn’t be sufficient by itself to justify signing a peace deal.
The broader realignment has drawn criticism from a number of instructions. Russia and Iran have each objected to Washington’s function in creating the transit hall, calling it encroachment on a area they think about their sphere of affect. Aram Hamparian, govt director of the Armenian Nationwide Committee of America, has argued the peace framework legitimizes what he referred to as Azerbaijan’s expulsion of Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian inhabitants with out securing any proper of return for these displaced.
A completed hall would additionally compete with the present Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway by means of Georgia, which presently carries most regional freight; a 2026 European Fee research discovered the brand new Armenia route may lower journey occasions by as a lot as 25% in contrast with that line. Turkey, in the meantime, is constructing a brand new rail line linking the town of Kars to Dilucu on its border with Nakhchivan, supposed to ultimately join into the hall as soon as development on the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides is full.
