“A hastily prepared, raw peace treaty would not bring a sustainable peace to the region,” Denis Gonchar, a senior Russian Foreign Ministry official, told the TASS news agency. “On the contrary, it would lay the foundation for new conflicts and tragedies in the future. Priority should be given not to speed but to the adequate preparation of balanced and mutually acceptable solutions.”
In an interview published on the ministry’s website, Gonchar said Western powers are trying to rush Armenian-Azerbaijani talks on the treaty even though the conflicting sides have yet to “find solutions on a number of difficult topics.”
“From a number of Western capitals, statements are periodically made to the effect that Baku and Yerevan will be able to sign a peace treaty already in ‘the coming weeks and months,’” he said. “We proceed from the premise that the time frames for the signing should be determined by the parties themselves.”
“The task of responsible mediators is not to speed up a negotiation process for opportunistic considerations but to facilitate reaching lasting long-term agreements,” the diplomat added in a clear jibe at the West.
In recent months, the United States and the European Union have stepped up their efforts to broker a settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held two rounds of intensive U.S.-mediated negotiations outside Washington in May and June. Meanwhile, the EU’s top official, Charles Michel, hosted a series of Armenian-Azerbaijani summits in Brussels.
The would-be peace treaty topped the agenda of those talks which fuelled speculation that it could be signed by the end of this year. Moscow has been very critical of the Western peace efforts, saying that their main aim is to drive it out of the South Caucasus. U.S. and EU officials deny this.
Azerbaijan is also pushing for a deal meeting its key demands. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared early this year that “2023 is the last chance for Armenia to sign the peace treaty.”
The two sides are understood to still disagree on mechanisms for delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and providing security guarantees for Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian population. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian complained on Thursday that Baku is reluctant to sign the kind of agreement that would commit it to recognizing Armenia’s existing borders.
Pashinian earlier pledged to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh through the peace treaty, drawing strong condemnation from his domestic political opponents. The latter also accuse him of plotting to end Armenia’s political and military alliance with Russia and to reorient his country towards the West.
Moscow has signaled its disapproval of Pashinian’s far-reaching concession to Baku. In another sign of mounting tensions with Yerevan, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman lambasted Pashinian on Wednesday for questioning the continued presence of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh and claiming that Moscow has scaled back its involvement in the negotiation process because of the war in Ukraine.