Aliyev declares that Azerbaijan and Armenia are “closer than ever” to concluding a peace treaty

Aliyev expresses his optimistic vision at a time when progress has been made towards the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.

On Tuesday, teams from both countries began to inspect the border section in nature, which both sides had agreed on, based on Soviet-era maps.

“We are closer than ever,” Aliyev said Tuesday of the peace deal.

“We now have a common understanding of what the peace agreement should look like. We just need to agree on the details,” the president said during a meeting with political scientists in Baku.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan last month agreed to Azerbaijan’s demand for the return of four villages that were part of the Republic of Azerbaijan during the USSR.

Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan rose and culminated last September with Azerbaijan’s blitzkrieg in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict region.

Baku captured Nagorno-Karabakh, which had existed as a “de facto” independent Armenian republic for more than 30 years after the collapse of the USSR, in a one-day offensive.

When Azerbaijan took control of Nagorno-Karabakh, its entire Armenian population – more than 100,000 people – fled to Armenia.