BAKU: Azerbaijan, under the leadership of President, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, has achieved the return of four villages in the Gazakh district previously occupied by Armenia without firing a shot. The process, which the head of state started in 2020 and in connection with which intensive work was carried out, apparently, has found its logical conclusion.
Commenting on the new security configuration in the region to Trend, Director of the Institute of Applied Ethnopolitical Studies, Kazakh political scientist Talgat Kaliyev, noted that the next round of Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations, which ended with the signing of several agreements, can be regarded as a good movement towards a full peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
“At the moment, Yerevan is showing enough political maturity and wisdom, as stabilizing the situation in the South Caucasus and normalization of relations between Armenia and its closest neighbors, Azerbaijan and Trkiye will allow Yerevan, first of all, to gain posi
tive economic prospects, establish good trade relations, and, among other things, get a good profit from the development of the Trans-Caspian international transport route,” he said.
According to Kaliyev, Yerevan will move in this direction.
“Especially since now Kazakhstan has also joined this process as a negotiator at the level of President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who made a diplomatic trip to both Baku and Yerevan and met with both leaders,” the political scientist added.
In turn, Kazakh political scientist and professor of the Department of Media Communication and History of Kazakhstan, MUIT Saken Mukan, told Trend that the agreement of the parties and the return of Azerbaijani villages did not come as a surprise to him.
“Since recently, the activation in the normalization of relations between the two countries has been quite rapid, which has its long-term perspective. The withdrawal of Russian peacekeepers from the territory of Azerbaijan, as well as the “strained” Armenian-Russian relations to date,
give Yerevan grounds to proceed with its national interests in the name of involvement in future regional economic projects,” he emphasized.
According to him, Armenia can have sufficient dividends from regional economic projects with access to the Chinese market through Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, but not as it is now through Turkmenistan, which is quite costly and bureaucratic.
Saken Mukan mentioned that it is too early to speculate on the future of the peace agreement at this stage, but positive processes in this direction are observed nowadays.
“I believe that the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev did not just pay an official visit to Yerevan. In my opinion, the purpose of the visit was to “prove” the groundwork for establishing peace and reaching agreements between the two countries. The President of Kazakhstan also offered the Kazakh platform for negotiations,” he said.
To note, on April 19, 2024, the 8th meeting of the State Commission on the Delimitation of the State Border between the R
epublic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia and the Commission on the Matters of Delimitation of the State Border and Border Security between the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan took place under the chairmanship of Shahin Mustafayev, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Mher Grigoryan, the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia.
At the initial stage of the delimitation process, the sides tentatively agreed on the passage of certain segments of the border line directly between the settlements of Baganis (RA) – Baganys Ayrim (AR), Voskepar (RA) – Ashagy Askipara (AR), Kirants (RA) – Kheyrimli (AR), and Berkaber (RA) – Gyzylhajily (AR) to bring them in line with the legally justified inter-republican border that existed within the Soviet Union at the time of its collapse.
Source: Trend News Agency