^{Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian PM Nikol Pashinyan. Photo}

On Tuesday, September 10th, Azerbaijan announced it would not sign a draft peace agreement with Armenia. The decision is based on the exclusion of unresolved provisions that Baku has been advocating for in negotiations since last year, Daily Sabah reports on September 10th.

Read more: Algeria’s President Alleges Election Irregularities After Winning

Aykhan Hajizada, spokesperson for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, said in a statement:

The call of the Armenian officials to sign the draft ‘peace agreement’ with the removal of non-agreed provisions, and attempts to postpone the solution of existing problems in bilateral relations to the next stage, are unacceptable.

Hajizada dismissed Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s remarks at a forum in Yerevan earlier in the day as a “pure distortion of reality”. He stressed that Baku’s primary condition for signing the peace agreement is the elimination of territorial claims against Azerbaijan in Armenia’s Constitution.