ISTANBUL

Azerbaijan on Monday said it is committed to a peace deal with Armenia and most of the points of a draft agreement have been agreed upon by both sides.

“Azerbaijan's proposal regarding the peace agreement is still valid. Therefore, the next steps should be taken mostly by Armenia. To date, most of the points of the peace agreement have been agreed between the parties,” Elnur Mammadov, Azerbaijan’s deputy foreign minister, told state news agency Azertac.

Mammadov said a peace deal with Armenia will be “more convenient and easier” after Azerbaijan fully restores its sovereignty over its internationally recognized territories in Karabakh.

Relations between the two former Soviet republic have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement, and also opened the door to normalization.

This September, the Azerbaijani army initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh to establish constitutional order in the region, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has also expressed his commitment to signing a peace agreement with Azerbaijan, and that he hopes a draft deal will be completed in "the next few months."

Earlier this month, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev raised the national flag in Karabakh, saying "we had been waiting for this day for more than 30 years."