ArmInfo.Armenia's ex-premier Hrant Bagratyan warns about the risks of signing a peace agreement with Azerbaijan.
It has been two years since Armenia's authorities have been speaking of a peace agreement with Azerbaijan. In this context he points out three main threats.
Signing a peace agreement without border delimitation will turn into a national disaster.
"In this case, Azerbaijan will get a free hand to launch a new aggression under the pretext of peace, whereas Armenia will have to forever forget about the districts in Vardenis, Jermuk, Sisian, Goris, as well as a section of the Goris-Kapan road," he said.
Secondly, Azerbaijan will get enclaves and block the Yerevan-Meghri road.
"Thirdly, if the peace agreement does not contain points on Artsakh's status, it will sink into oblivion within months. And then do not you ever claim you 'did not know or realize' that," Mr Bagratyan said.
At the February 15 Cabinet meeting, Armenia's Premier Nikol Pashinyan stated:
"Yesterday, the Republic of Armenia completed the work on the next phase of the draft treaty on peace and establishing relations with Azerbaijan, and our proposals have been forwarded to the Azerbaijani side. In other words, saying proposals we mean a complete draft document containing our proposals. We also forwarded the document to the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chair countries.
"We work on the draft according to the following logic: to develop a document that we are ready to sign at any time. It is clear, of course, that this document should be acceptable to Azerbaijan as well, and we hope that it will be possible to develop the certain progress observed as a result of three rounds of negotiations. Our vision is as follows. the document must contain the kind of logic of agreements, the kind of a system of checks and balances that would rule out any scenario of disrupting lasting and sustainable peace. The point of this is that the signing of the document does not turn into a war already on the basis of the peace treaty. This sounds absurd, but it can also be such a scenario, but we want the contrary, a really lasting peace."