Pashinyan-AFP says war with Azerbaijan is ‘possible’

TBILISI (Reuters) – Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in an interview with AFP published on Friday that another war with Azerbaijan was “very possible” if the two countries failed to agree on a peace treaty.

Nikol Pashinyan declared, “Apparently a (new) war (with Azerbaijan) is very possible unless a peace treaty is signed and ratified by the parliaments of both countries.”

Baku and Yerevan oppose each other over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijani territory but inhabited primarily by Armenians, which has been a source of conflict for years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Armenia lost a large part of its territory in the region in the last conflict in 2020.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have pursued a path of diplomacy in recent months with the aim of striking a peace deal, but there have been sporadic clashes between the two countries.

Tensions between the two countries escalated in April with Azerbaijan setting up a checkpoint at the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia.

(Reporting by Felix Light; French version Zifan Liu; Editing by Camille Renaud)