BAKU. April 19 (Interfax) - Baku is ready to sign a peace treaty with Yerevan if Armenia drops territorial claims to Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said.
"As the country that put forward the initiative first, Azerbaijan is ready to sign a peace treaty with Armenia on the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty. In order to do that, Armenia should drop territorial claims to Azerbaijan and definitively acknowledge that Karabakh is a territory of Azerbaijan," the ministry said in response to the Armenian Foreign Ministry's statement of April 19.
"Despite 30 years of occupation of Azerbaijani lands, it was Azerbaijan that initiated a peace treaty with Armenia on the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty," while "Armenia has been hindering the negotiating process under various pretexts and trying to include issues at odds with international law in the peace treaty's text, thus stalling the process," the ministry said.
"The fact that Armenia has provided no comment on Azerbaijan's peace treaty proposals indicates that Yerevan is not interested in result-oriented negotiations," it said.
Baku demanded that Yerevan stop interfering with the process of reintegrating Armenian residents of the Karabakh region into Azerbaijan.
The ministry said it believes that "the accusations brought by the Armenian Foreign Ministry against Azerbaijani soldiers who wandered into the Armenian territory in bad weather, were taken prisoner and charged with killing a person without any legal grounds whatsoever, contravene every legal norm and principle."
"This step of Armenia demonstrates that, after the end of 30-year occupation, it has no intention of responding to such a confidence building measure as Azerbaijan's immediate return of Armenian servicemen who crossed the Azerbaijani border. This step of the Armenian side deserves strong condemnation," the ministry said.