Azerbaijan and Armenia are closer than ever to lasting peace after decades of conflict, a senior Azerbaijani official said, though Baku insists Armenia amend its constitution before signing a final agreement.
The South Caucasus neighbors fought intermittently since the late 1980s, mostly over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region, before reaching a preliminary U.S.-brokered peace agreement last August.
Azerbaijan's main sticking point for a formal deal is Armenia's constitution, whose preamble references a Soviet-era document calling for the reunification of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, then an autonomous region of Soviet Azerbaijan.
It was illegally occupied by an ethnically Armenian administration for three decades before Azerbaijan reclaimed it through a military operation in 2023.
A lasting peace could reopen trade and transport links across the South Caucasus, strengthening connections between Asia and Europe while reshaping the regional influence of Russia, Türkiye and Iran.
