Cyprus welcomes Azerbaijan-Armenia peace agreement
Cyprus’ foreign ministry on Saturday said it “warmly welcomes” what it described as a “groundbreaking” peace agreement signed by Armenia and Azerbaijan which brought to a formal end the decades-long Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“This historic agreement creates the momentum and great prospects for lasting peace and true prosperity in the region,” the foreign ministry said, adding that that peace will be maintained “based on mutual recognition of each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the inviolability of borders”.
It also gave a special mention to United States President Donald Trump, with the US having brokered the deal. The ministry described Trump’s role as “instrumental”.
The agreement was signed at the White House by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Saturday, and promises that “the conditions have been created for our nations to finally embark on building good neighbourly relations on the basis of the inviolability of international borders”.
It foresees, among other things, that both countries will delimit their borders and also open the Zangezur corridor – a transport corridor connecting contiguous Azerbaijan with the Nakhchivan exclave through southern Armenia.
Armenia agreed to award the US exclusive special development rights in the Zangezur corridor for 99 years, with the US set to sublet the land to a consortium which will develop rail, oil, gas, and fibreoptic lines, as well as a possible electricity cable.
The corridor will now be known as the “Trump route for international peace and prosperity”, and will be governed under Armenian law.
At the agreement’s signing, Trump highlighted the length of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which in its current form dates back to the soviet era.
“It’s a long time – 35 years. They fought and now they’re friends, and they’re going to be friends for a long time,” he said.
The modern conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region had begun in 1988, when ethnic Armenians living in the region, which was a part of the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR), held a referendum with the aim of transferring sovereignty over the region to the Armenian SSR.
This attempt was put down by the Azerbaijani SSR, with intercommunal violence then erupting between the region’s ethnic Armenians and ethnic Azeris. That conflict then escalated into a full-scale war following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, with Armenia invading Azerbaijan and declaring the ‘Republic of Artsakh’ in the Karabakh region.
A ceasefire was signed in 1994, with mass expulsions of ethnic Azeris from Armenian-held territory and of ethnic Armenians from Azerbaijani territory then ensuing. The ‘Republic of Artsakh’ remained unrecognised by the international community throughout its existence.
The war then reignited in 2020, with Azerbaijan launching an offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh and regaining a significant amount of territory before an armistice was signed late that year.
Two years later, Azerbaijan blockaded the Nagorno-Karabakh region, claiming to prevent what it considers the illegal transportation of weapons and natural resources.
This eventually led to the capitulation of the ‘Republic of Artsakh’ in September 2023 and its official dissolution at the end of that year, as well as a flight of ethnic Armenians from the region.