Stanislav Pritchin: Baku and Yerevan may sign a peace treaty within a year

The 2nd International Conference of the Western Azerbaijan Community "The Right to Return: Advancing Justice for Azerbaijanis Expelled from Armenia" took place in Baku the day before. Vestnik Kavkaza correspondent Marina Lagutina spoke with Stanislav Pritchin, Head of the Central Asia Sector at IMEMO RAS, about the prospects for peace in the South Caucasus.

- Stanislav Aleksandrovich, how do you see the current process of normalizing Armenian-Azerbaijani relations, both in the near or medium term?

- There is still too much unpredictability in Armenian-Azerbaijani relations. For instance, the forecasts that we made based on expert surveys and common sense following the Karabakh war turned out to be unfulfilled. They did not take into account a number of factors, including psychological ones.

First of all, the Armenian side, particularly Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has demonstrated unpredictability in negotiations. He acts depending on the circumstances. In 2021, he managed to win the parliamentary elections and stay in power, which removed the risks of internal destabilization for him, but the uncertainty of his behavior persists. At COP29 in Baku, which could be considered a good negotiating platform, unfortunately, it was not possible to agree on a meeting due to this uncertainty.

However, there are also positive signals. A bilateral dialogue has been established, limiting the influence of third-party players in the settlement process. This generally has a positive effect on the negotiation process, although the main negotiating blocks on the peace treaty remain unresolved: of the 10% that have not yet been agreed upon, Yerevan is putting off the issue of changing the Armenian Constitution for a long time - until 2027 - and is trying to eliminate it altogether. Not long ago, the Constitutional Court of Armenia ruled that the Basic Law of the Republic does not contain territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

The parties still have claims against each other in arbitration and other international courts, which slows down the settlement of relations. As a gesture of goodwill, Azerbaijan and Armenia could synchronously and symmetrically abandon these claims in order to remove the irritating factor, but this requires a certain political will. Perhaps, the parties exchange proposals on this topic from time to time.

To some extent, we can say that the signing of a peace treaty is possible in the next year or two. However, the signing of a peace treaty is not the final goal, but an intermediate stage that opens the door to solving a huge number of pressing issues of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement.

- What issues could be resolved after the signing of the peace treaty?

- There are a lot of them, starting with transport corridors. It has been put aside for now, but it is still on the agenda. Without opening transport corridors, there can be no normalization of relations, economic cooperation, or creating interest in economic and social cooperation between the countries initially proposed by Russia as a basis for settlement.

There is also a very complex issue of border delimitation. Despite the fact that there is already a precedent for settling the situation on a certain disputed section, about 1,000 km of the border still need to be agreed upon. Given difficult geographical conditions, the delimitation process will take quite a long time in any case.

The issue of refugees from the 1990s returning to Armenia has become relevant now. If this topic is included in the negotiating agenda for a peace treaty, the signing of the document will be postponed for an even longer period. It will be very difficult for the parties to agree, this is topic is too sensitive - socially, psychologically, and politically - and finding a compromise will be difficult. Thus, here we should rather talk about a more delayed and advanced stage of the settlement.

We do not see any global tectonic movements in the settlement yet. Progress will depend on initiating trade with each other and working on fully opening the borders. These are the most important steps that would move the settlement forward.