During his official visit to Brazil, RA Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan interviewed Folha, one of the country's largest and most influential daily newspapers.
To a journalist's question about finalizing the text of the peace treaty with Azerbaijan and signing it, Minister Mirzoyan replied: "After decades of conflict, we believe—we are confident—that there is a real opportunity to turn the page on hostility in our region and establish genuine peace and lasting stability.
However, both sides must take a constructive approach to make this a reality. Armenia sees this opportunity and is fully committed to this peace agenda. Finally, together with our Azerbaijani partners, we finalized the draft treaty.
The peace treaty establishes several important provisions, which can become a solid basis for further steps if signed, ratified, and implemented. I am mainly talking about mutual recognition of territorial integrity. We recognize this integrity based on the borders between our countries at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union (1991). This is of vital importance. We also undertake to refrain from using force and interference in each other's internal affairs and other agreements.
We are ready to begin consultations immediately regarding the place and date of signing. Unfortunately, Azerbaijan is bringing various new, artificial preconditions to the peace agenda, which complicates the signing of the agreement and establishing, so to speak, institutionalized peace. We have almost reached the goal: we need a little more political and strong political will to meet and sign the agreement.
We have also proposed unblocking the transport routes, starting with the railway that operated during the Soviet years, and we have proposed creating a bilateral arms control and verification mechanism since Azerbaijan has also expressed concerns on this issue," Mirzoyan said.
When asked whether it would be possible to sign the agreement if these preconditions were in place, Mirzoyan replied: "We are ready to sign the agreement immediately. However, what we hear from Azerbaijan does not give the impression that they are ready. Unfortunately, as I said, they continue to present new preconditions."
The interview also touched upon Armenia-Brazil bilateral relations," he noted.
Mirzoyan also touched upon Armenia-Brazil relations.
"We attach great importance to this visit, as there have been no reciprocal visits for quite some time. We have decided to intensify our political dialogue with Brazil. We have a successful and mutually beneficial cooperation on international platforms; we support each other's candidacies whenever possible. We have almost the same vision on reforming the global governance and international relations system, as we see that the current system is not functioning correctly, especially regarding early warning mechanisms or preventing serious violations and mass violence.
Brazil will host COP30, and Armenia will host COP17 on biodiversity (in 2026). We appreciate the support we received from Brazil during the elections. These two events, of course, bring us closer together. We also intend to organize and implement some joint events. COP30 should pay more attention to the needs of developing countries and the Global South. According to different assessments, "This aspect has been somewhat absent in previous COPs," he said.
