Iran welcomes Armenia-Azerbaijan ceasefire agreement
Iran has welcomed the recent agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease fire in the Nagorno-Karabakh region and offered to help establish lasting peace.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday that Iran hoped the agreement would “lead to final arrangements to establish sustainable peace in the Caucasus region.”
The leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia signed a statement late on Monday to end the war in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The ceasefire agreement came into effect overnight.
Azerbaijan and Armenia had been fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh since September 27. Russia several times attempted to mediate an end to the war.
Iran, which shares borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, has previously offered to mediate between the two countries. Most recently, the Islamic Republic put forward a specific peace initiative to end the conflict, which Russia said would closely study.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry pointed to the fact that the stipulations in the ceasefire agreement had been included in the Iranian peace initiative.
The ministry said Iran continued to stress the principles of respecting countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity, not attempting to alter internationally-recognized borders, freeing occupied territories, allowing the displaced to return, respecting the security and rights of minorities, and expelling all Takfiri and foreign militants from the region.
Earlier on Tuesday, Russia announced that it would be sending peacekeeping forces to Nagorno-Karabakh to monitor the implementation of the ceasefire agreement.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry said Iran was ready to assist the Russian peacekeepers take their positions along contact lines based on the ceasefire deal.
Separately, the Iranian president’s chief of staff, Mahmoud Vaezi, said also on Tuesday that Iran was glad the agreement had been reached.
“We believe,” Vaezi said, “that if the sides… remain committed to international law, including on the territorial integrity of countries and citizenship rights, negotiations and [the pursuance of] a political solution will end this long-running dispute.”
Nagorno-Karabakh, home to ethnic Armenian people, is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, but it has been under the control of Armenian-backed separatists since the early 1992, when they broke from Azerbaijan in a war that killed some 30,000 people.
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