Azerbaijan on Wednesday insisted that arch-foe Armenia must meet Baku’s ‘legitimate demands’ before the Caucasus neighbours can sign a peace treaty, the text of which they agreed upon last month.

The two ex-Soviet republics announced on March 14 they had wrapped up talks aimed at resolving their decades-long conflict, with both sides agreeing on the text of a possible treaty.

A deal to normalise ties would be a major breakthrough in a region where Russia, the European Union, the United States and Turkey all jostle for influence.

Baku and Yerevan fought two wars for control of Azerbaijan’s Armenian-populated region of Karabakh, at the end of the Soviet Union and again in 2020, before Azerbaijan seized the entire area in a 24-hour offensive in September 2023.

Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev said Wednesday that Baku ‘is not putting forward any additional conditions’ for signing the treaty.

‘Our demands are well known to Armenia, they are not new. We have been voicing them for a long time, but have yet to receive any serious response from Armenia,’ he told a news conference alongside visiting German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

‘The OSCE Minsk Group must be dissolved,’ he said, referring to the now defunct group of international mediators — France, Russia and the United States — set up in 1991 under the aegis of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to encourage a negotiated resolution to the conflict.

He also reiterated Baku’s longstanding demand to remove from Armenia’s constitution a reference to its declaration of independence, which asserts territorial claims over Karabakh.

Any such amendments to Armenia’s constitution would require a referendum.

‘Once these two conditions are met, there will be no obstacles to signing the peace treaty,’ Aliyev said.

‘The ball is in Armenia’s court. If Armenia truly wants to sign the peace agreement, it must accept these two legitimate demands of Azerbaijan.’

Yerevan has said it is ready to sign the peace treaty without delay and prime minister Nikol Pashinyan announced a referendum to amend the constitution for 2027.

Pashinyan has recognised Baku’s sovereignty over Karabakh after three decades of Armenian separatist rule, a move seen as a crucial first step towards a normalisation of relations.

Armenia also last year returned to Azerbaijan four border villages it had seized decades earlier.