Armenia to return Azerbaijani territories to avert conflict — Pashinyan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said that Armenia may face a war with Azerbaijan if it does not compromise with Baku on returning some strategic Azerbaijani territories that Armenia has occupied since the early 1990s.

Pashinyan was speaking during a Monday meeting with residents of border areas in the Tavush region, close to a string of deserted Azerbaijani villages that Yerevan has occupied since the opening phases of the countries' three-decade-long conflict in early 1990.

TASS quoted Pashinyan as saying in a video of the meeting circulated by his government: "Now we can leave here, let’s go and tell that no, we are not going to do anything. This means that at the end of the week, a war will begin."

Pashinyan has repeatedly signalled in recent weeks that he is willing to return the villages to Azerbaijan, which are important for Yerevan, as they control its main road northwards to the border with Georgia.

Azerbaijan has said that the return of its lands is a necessary precondition for a peace deal to end three decades of conflict over the region of Karabakh.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.

In the fall of 2020 in 44 days of clashes, Baku liberated several cities, villages and settlements from Armenian occupation, ending in a Moscow-brokered truce. The peace agreement is celebrated as a triumph in Azerbaijan.

Last September, the Azerbaijani army initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh and liberated the rest of its territories, ending 30 years of Armenian occupation.