Hikmet Hajiyev, a senior aide and foreign-policy advisor to Aliyev, made the remarks on Friday in a message to foreign diplomats he was accompanying on a visit to the formerly Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Aliyev and Pashinian last met on the margins of a Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on August 31.
In identical statements issued after the meeting, Yerevan and Baku highlighted the “historic significance” of a Washington declaration signed last year, but made no mention of plans to sign a peace agreement that was inked by the two countries’ foreign ministers at a U.S.-hosted summit in August 2025.
Azerbaijan has made the signing of a peace agreement conditional on Armenia’s removing a reference to the 1990 Declaration of Independence from its Constitution. The declaration cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, which Baku views as a territorial claim to Azerbaijan.
“Both sides agreed to start bilateral cooperation aimed at advancing the further peace agenda, strengthening confidence between the two countries, and developing trade ties, including transport connectivity and communications between the two countries and in the wider region,” Hajiyev said of the Aliyev-Pashinian meeting, as quoted by Azerbaijani media.
He added that the two countries “have already learned to live in conditions of peace and are moving in that direction.”
Foreign diplomats accredited in Azerbaijan began a two-day tour of Nagorno-Karabakh on September 11. According to the Azerbaijani side, they would be shown construction and infrastructure projects across the region that Baku captured militarily in 2020-2023.
The region, disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan since the late 1980s, had seen two major wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with tens of thousands of people killed during the three decades of conflict.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenians broke free from Baku’s rule after nearly three years of fighting that ended in a 1994 ceasefire. At the cessation of hostilities then, they were left in control of most of the former autonomous oblast as well as seven surrounding districts of Azerbaijan proper.
Azerbaijan regained control of all of its districts and some territories of Nagorno-Karabakh proper in a 2020 war, completing the military takeover of the region three years later.
Azerbaijan’s 2023 military offensive forced Nagorno-Karabakh’s entire Armenian population of more than 100,000 to flee to Armenia.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have since been involved in a peace process that culminated in agreements reached through U.S. mediation in 2025.
Meanwhile, Armenian and international monitors have raised concerns over the preservation of Armenian historical and cultural monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In his message to foreign diplomats, Hajiyev said that “all cultural heritage in Karabakh and other territories of Azerbaijan is protected under the country’s legislation.”
Independent researchers, however, have documented several cases of Azerbaijan destroying Armenian cultural heritage in Nagorno-Karabakh since Baku’s takeover of the region.
Only a few days ago, the Caucasus Heritage Watch, a U.S.-based research and monitoring group, documented with satellite imagery the destruction of a historic cemetery in the Nagorno-Karabakh town of Shushi. According to the monitoring group, the site containing 12th- and 13th-century khachkars (cross stones) and historic gravestones was leveled, and a sewer line is now being laid through part of it.