Baku won't accept any conditions that undermine its sovereignty: Azerbaijan

Azerbaijan's foreign minister has rejected a demand from Armenia to provide special security guarantees for some 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in the Karabakh enclave ahead of a new round of peace talks.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said in an interview with Reuters on Thursday that a guarantee was unnecessary, and the demand amounted to interference in Azerbaijan's affairs.

This was in response to Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who was quoted last month as saying Armenia did recognise that Karabakh was part of Azerbaijan, but wanted Baku to provide the guarantees for its ethnic Armenian population.

"We don't accept such a precondition ... for a number of reasons," he said.

"The most fundamental is the following: this is an internal, sovereign issue. The Azerbaijan constitution and a number of international conventions to which Azerbaijan is party provide all the necessary conditions in order to guarantee the rights of this population."

He said ethnic Armenians could still use and be educated in their own language and preserve their culture if they integrated into Azerbaijani society and state structures like other ethnic and religious minorities.

'Some progress' in peace talks

Nagorno-Karabakh, internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan, has been a source of conflict between the two Caucasus neighbours since the years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and between ethnic Armenians and Turkic Azeris for well over a century.

After heavy fighting and a Russian-brokered ceasefire, Azerbaijan in 2020 took over areas that had been occupied by Armenia for 30 years.

The two sides have since been discussing a peace deal in which they would agree on borders, settle differences over the territory, and unfreeze relations.

Bayramov said there had been "some progress" in peace talks, and that Baku was keen to strike a deal, but also made comments that show how wide the gulf remains before he meets his Armenian counterpart for more talks in Washington next week:

"Why did it take the Armenian prime minister two-and-a-half years (since the war ended) to say he actually recognised the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Azerbaijan?"

Bayramov, who was in London to attend a conference about Ukraine's recovery, complained too about the continued presence of thousands of Armenian troops on Azerbaijani territory.

Meanwhile, Pashinyan is under pressure at home to protect the rights of the ethnic Armenians living in the enclave as Baku pushes for ethnic Armenian government and military structures to be dissolved and the population to accept Azerbaijani passports.