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Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has reiterated that the newly established peace with Azerbaijan requires care and institutionalization.
Speaking at the Orbeli Forum 2025: Building Peace and Multilateral Cooperation forum, Pashinyan appeared to respond to the latest controversial statement by Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev.
“As much as the name Basargechar is used in Azerbaijan, the names Artsakh or Kovsakan are used in Armenia, and so on,” he said, referring to the use of each others’ toponyms and names of cities alternatively causing controversy in both countries. Basargechar is controversially used in Azerbaijan to refer to Armenia’s Vardenis, while Artsakh is used by Armenians in reference to Karabakh. Kovsakan is used to refer to Zangilan.
“Sometimes, in Armenia and Azerbaijan, people perceive and acknowledge only part of history, considering the portion that aligns with their own perspective as legitimate, while deeming the part from the other side as illegitimate. Whether what they say is right or not—simply trying to define and answer this question is, in itself, a precondition for failure,” the Prime Minister said.
Pashinyan emphasized that there is a starting point for peace: the regulation on the joint activities of the border delimitation commissions of Armenia and Azerbaijan, which holds supreme legal authority, followed by the Washington Declaration and the initialed peace agreement between the two countries.
“The existence of these three documents provides the basis to say that peace has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Established peace requires daily care and further institutionalization,” Pashinyan said.
Earlier, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev claimed that early 20th-century "Tsarist Russian maps" show that “almost all place names in the territory of present-day Armenia are of Azerbaijani origin.”
“There is no Lake Sevan, but there is Lake Goycha. We did not create these maps; they were made by Tsarist Russia, which at one time resettled Armenians from Iran and Eastern Anatolia to Karabakh in order to change the ethnic composition,” the President of Azerbaijan said.