Azerbaijan at 'real peace' with Armenia but wants it to change constitution

Azerbaijan and Armenia are at "real ​peace" and rebuilding trade links after decades of conflict, a senior Azerbaijani official told Reuters, but Baku is insisting on ‌changes to Armenia's constitution before a final deal can be signed.

The South Caucasus neighbours had been at intermittent war since the late 1980s, mostly over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, before reaching a preliminary U.S.-brokered peace agreement last August.

For Azerbaijan, a sticking point to signing a formal deal is the preamble of Armenia's constitution, which contains a ​reference to another Soviet-era document calling for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous region in Soviet Azerbaijan.
The territory had ​de facto independence and was governed by an ethnically Armenian administration for three decades before Azerbaijan took it ⁠in a lightning offensive in 2023. Most of its 100,000 population fled to Armenia.
A lasting peace could reopen trade and transport links across the ​South Caucasus, strengthening connections between Asia and Europe while reshaping the regional influence of Russia, Turkey and Iran.

In an interview with Reuters on the ​sidelines of a forum in the city of Shushi this week, Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to Azerbaijan's president and head of the president's foreign policy department, praised the countries' progress towards peace, including growing direct contacts and bilateral trade.
"We are living in conditions of real peace. For Azerbaijan and Armenia, peace is not just something written on paper ​or contained in a declaration — it is a reality," he said in an interview, pointing to increased supplies of Azerbaijani oil products to Armenia.
Despite ​the progress, he said Baku maintained its stance on Armenia's constitution.
"The form of constitutional changes is Armenia's internal matter," said Hajiyev. "What is important for Azerbaijan is ‌that the ⁠provisions we regard as territorial claims against our country are formally removed, whether through the adoption of a new constitution or another legal mechanism."

"Once that issue is resolved, we believe there will be no obstacles to signing the final peace agreement," he said.