“It cannot be said that the peace treaty will ensure a 100 percent solution to all issues but it can lay the groundwork for the development of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia,” Bayramov told Azerbaijani state television.
He did not say which issues will remain unresolved if Baku and Yerevan succeed in negotiating such a treaty.
One of the remaining sticking points in their discussions is how to delimit and demarcate the long Armenian-Azerbaijani border. Yerevan has insisted until now on including in the peace accord a clear delimitation mechanism that would commit Baku to recognizing Armenia’s international borders.
The Azerbaijani side has been reluctant to do that. It is also against using late Soviet-era maps for the delimitation process, an idea advanced by Armenia and backed by the European Union.
Hikmet Hajiyev, a top foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, said last week that Baku believes "the border delimitation issue should be kept separate from peace treaty discussions." Alen Simonian, the Armenian parliament speaker and a leading member of the ruling Civil Contract party, said that Yerevan does not object to this in principle.
Armenian opposition leaders expressed serious concern over such an arrangement, saying that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government is ready to make more concessions to Azerbaijan without securing anything in return.
Pashinian and other Armenian officials themselves suggested this summer that Aliyev wants to leave the door open for future territorial claims to Armenia. Some Armenian analysts believe this is the reason why Aliyev keeps delaying further negotiations mediated by the United States and the European Union.
The Azerbaijani leader said earlier this month that the peace treaty would not be enough to preclude another Armenian-Azerbaijani war. He demanded concrete safeguards against Armenian “revanchism.”