Azerbaijan Demands EU Mission Exit for Armenia Peace Treaty

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s chief policy adviser, Hikmet Hajiyev, has stated that Baku is demanding the withdrawal of the European Union monitoring mission before a peace treaty can be signed with Armenia.  The EU deployed the monitoring mission in early 2023 along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border following an escalation of gunfire exchanges. Subsequently, Azerbaijani forces overran the last Armenian-held areas of the hotly contested Nagorno-Karabakh territory in September 2023, spurring the mass exodus of the Karabakh Armenian…