Armenia invites Azerbaijan to demilitarize border, sign non-aggression pact - Pashinyan

YEREVAN. Jan 29 (Interfax) - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has invited Azerbaijan to sign a non-aggression pact.

"Armenia has invited Azerbaijan to demilitarize the border, establish a mutual arms control mechanism, and sign a non-aggression pact, if it turns out that a peace treaty would take a longer amount of time to sign than was previously expected," Pashinyan said at an event marking Army Day.

Legitimacy should serve as a crucial factor of Armenia's external security, Pashinyan said.

"The Republic of Armenia should identify itself based on a territory which it has been recognized on by the international community. This is the territory of [the former] Armenian SSR [Soviet Socialist Republic], which is identical to the Republic of Armenia's sovereign territory. We should declare clearly and unambiguously that we don't have and won't have any ambitions regarding any other territory, and this should become a strategic foundation of Armenia's external security," Pashinyan said.

Armenia has no claims on any territory other than its sovereign territory, and nobody can lay any claims on any part of Armenia's territory, he said.

"As I've said, we stand ready to give such firm and irreversible guarantees, but we expect identical guarantees from others. We've proposed several mechanisms guaranteeing security to Azerbaijan. For instance, a symmetrical pullout of troops towards the administrative borders of the Armenian SSR and the Azerbaijani SSR. This border has been the state border in line with the 1991 Almaty Declaration, and Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed in Prague on October 6, 2022 that they recognized each other's territorial integrity on that basis. A symmetrical pullout of troops would make it possible to place all territories of the Azerbaijani SSR under Azerbaijan's control and all territories of the Armenian SSR under Armenia's control," he said.

"The Republic of Armenia is committed to the peace agenda and will not depart from it," he said.