Armenia agreed to return several villages to Azerbaijan in a pact seen by both sides on Friday as a milestone in the search for a peace deal after two wars since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman Aykhan Hajizada wrote on the social media site long-awaited historic”.
In Armenia, the prime minister’s office told the state news agency: “In this process, the Republic of Armenia has had a reduction in risks associated with border delimitation and security.”
The office said that in practice the return only affects “two and a half villages” because Azerbaijan already partially controls the settlements involved, but added that the border demarcation is a “significant event.”
The settlements are deserted, but have strategic importance as they are located near Armenia’s main road leading north to the border with Georgia, through which most of the country’s trade passes and the pipeline that brings the gas from Russia.
Azerbaijan considered the return of the villages a precondition for a peace deal after more than three decades of conflict, the central region of which is Nagorno-Karabakh.
The dynamic changed dramatically in Azerbaijan’s favor in September, when its forces launched an offensive to regain control of Karabakh, where Armenians have lived in de facto independence since the mid-1990s and fled to Armenia. .
Source: Terra
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