Armenia sends Azerbaijan a peace proposal on Nagorno-Karabakh issue

The Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday, that Armenia had sent Azerbaijan a draft proposal for a peaceful settlement of the dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The recent confrontation between the two countries in the South Caucasus erupted due to a two-month blockade, led by citizens of Azerbaijan claiming to be activists in the field of environmental protection, of the Lachin Corridor, which is the only land road linking Armenia to the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“Armenia has completed the next stage of work on the peace treaty and the consolidation of relations with Azerbaijan, and our proposals were sent to the Azerbaijani side,” Pashinyan said in a televised Armenian government meeting.

Still there are no specific details revealed of the Armenian peace proposal, as previous attempts to reach a settlement in the months after Azerbaijan launched large-scale cross-border attacks inside Armenia in September didn’t bear fruit.

Armenia described Azerbaijan’s actions as an unjustified attack, while Azerbaijan said its soldiers responded after Armenian sabotage units tried to mine their sites.

More than 200 Armenian soldiers and 80 Azerbaijani soldiers were killed at the war in 2020 in Nagorno-Karabakh, the region that was a stage of dispute between the two countries, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but is inhabited and mainly controlled by an Armenian majority.

Russia is a major power broker in the region and has thousands of peacekeepers across Nagorno-Karabakh.

Tensions escalated between Moscow and Yerevan in light of Pashinyan and other Armenian officials appealing to Russia to do more to ensure mutual entry between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh without restrictions through the Lachin corridor.

Yerevan says the protesters are government-backed agitators, while Azerbaijan says it has legal grievances over illegal mining.

Residents of the disputed area have reported shortages of medicine and food as a result of what they say is the blockade, and Baku said that the road wasn’t closed to humanitarian aid.