ISTANBUL

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev on Monday said he welcomed Armenia's and Azerbaijan’s desire to finalize a peace treaty amid an official visit to the Armenian capital Yerevan.

“We fully welcome the desire of Armenia and Azerbaijan to conclude a peace treaty,” Tokayev was quoted by a Kazakh presidency statement as saying during a joint news conference with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Expressing that Kazakhstan is ready to provide full support and undertake a “mission of goodwill,” Tokayev said their main goal is to bring “friendly countries closer together and open the way to lasting peace, good neighborliness, and stability in the region.”

Tokayev further said he and Pashinyan had an exchange of views on current issues of the regional and global agenda, indicating that Kazakhstan and Armenia’s position on many pressing issues at the regional and international levels are close.

“It is gratifying that providing mutual support for our initiatives has already become a tradition. We agreed to work together in the future, as well as to actively participate in the process of strengthening peace and stability,” Tokayev also said.

He went on to say that there is great potential for strengthening bilateral ties between the two countries, emphasizing the importance of intensifying cooperation in fields such as industry, construction, transport and logistics, agriculture, finance, innovation, and tourism.

He added that Kazakhstan welcomed Armenia’s Crossroads of Peace project, while also supporting the proposal to open direct flights between the two countries.

For his part, Pashinyan noted the importance of the agreements signed by the two countries following today's narrow and expanded format negotiations, which he said are of “significant importance in the context of the further development of our bilateral relations.”

Relations between Baku and Yerevan have remained tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Most of the territory was liberated by Azerbaijan during a war in the fall of 2020, which ended after a Russian-brokered peace agreement that also opened the door to normalization.

Azerbaijan established full sovereignty in Karabakh following an "anti-terrorist operation" last September, after which separatist forces in the region surrendered.​​​​​​​​​​​​