The final obstacles to a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been removed, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov announced. According to him, 15 out of 17 points had already been settled earlier in the negotiations, and a satisfactory answer was finally found to the last two conditions. One of the points of contention was the need to amend the Armenian constitution, which makes territorial claims to Karabakh.
As is well-known, Karabakh declared independence in 1992 after the break-up of the Soviet Union, with the overwhelming majority of the Azeri population fleeing Armenian rule. A new war to regain the territory, which under international law belongs to Azerbaijan, was launched in 2020 and was won by Azeri forces in a matter of weeks. Relations between Yerevan and Baku have been strained ever since: a peace agreement in the making could settle this.
The Armenian population has since left Karabakh. Even the recaptured territories are still only accessible to Azeris with special permission. This is due to both security risks and severe landmining, which could take years to clear.
Nevertheless, reconstruction is proceeding apace. Hungary, which has strategic relations with Azerbaijan, has a role to play in this: last year, for example, József Torma, the ambassador to Azerbaijan, revealed that Hungarian companies are involved in the reconstruction of Soltanli, which has 6,000 inhabitants. The diplomat told the Azerbaijani media that Hungarian companies could be of particular interest in the fields of sewerage, water management, and green projects.
It makes it difficult for life to return to the way it used to be, what Azeris call "urbicide". This means that, because of the wars and the last 30 years of Armenian rule, former Azeri settlements were razed to the ground. They have not spared abandoned houses, but even monuments and often cemeteries. One of the most famous examples of this is Agdam, which was home to 40,000 people at the turn of the 1990s, but after the war became a run-down ghost town. Rebuilding of the iconic settlement has also begun, partly based on its former townscape.
