Stratfor: Tensions on Armenian-Azerbaijani border may increase in the second half of the year

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's statements about two unagreed articles in the draft peace treaty with Azerbaijan underscore the fact that although the conclusion of a peace treaty is theoretically close, issues related to border demarcation are likely to delay the conclusion of a peace treaty in the near future, according to the Stratfor think tank.

At the same time, according to the think tank, tensions on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border may increase in the second half of the year if the delimitation process is suspended.

However, the risk of a major escalation in the near future, according to the think tank, will remain quite low.

As Stratfor notes, the parties can also use their differences on issues not included in the peace treaty, such as "the issue of a corridor in the region or changes to the Constitution," as a reason to delay the process.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told a press conference on January 31 that there is nothing new in connection with the "peace treaty" and that 15 of the 17 points in the draft have been agreed upon.

"There are two unagreed points, and for part of both Armenia has proposed solutions. One of them concerns the non-deployment of representatives of the forces of third countries along the border. We propose to apply this to the border, to the delimited sections. There is also the issue of withdrawal of disputes from international instances, which under certain circumstances and conditions can be acceptable for us, in the sense that we not only withdraw something from international instances, but we refuse from these disputes in general.

Otherwise, there may be a situation that we have withdrawn an issue and Azerbaijan has withdrawn its claims, i.e. we have agreed that we will not bring it to international instances, but at the next stage Azerbaijan will put these issues on the table of bilateral relations, and escalation may occur around this.

In this case, we will already close the way to manage the risk of this escalation, to use international platforms," Pashinyan said.

Reprinted from news.am