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BAKU: Azerbaijan has removed all restrictions on cargo transit to Armenia, President Ilham Aliyev said on Tuesday, in a sign of warming ties between the former foes following nearly four decades of conflict.
Aliyev told Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev at a meeting in Astana that a shipment of Kazakh grain via Azerbaijan to Armenia marked the first such consignment since transit was halted in the final years of the Soviet Union, when war initially broke out between the two neighbors.
“I think this is also a good indicator that peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia is no longer on paper, but in practice,” Aliyev was quoted by Azerbaijani state media as saying.
Hikmet Hajjiyev, Aliyev’s foreign policy aide, told Reuters that the cargo shipments would travel to Armenia via Georgia, calling the transit “an economic benefit of peace.”
A spokeswoman for Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hailed Aliyev’s move as a “step of great importance for opening regional communications, strengthening mutual trust, and institutionalizing the peace established between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Armenia and Azerbaijan were locked in bitter conflict from the late 1980s over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region within Azerbaijan that had enjoyed de facto independence for three decades until Baku took back full control in 2023.
The neighbors reached a US-brokered peace agreement in August, but major hurdles remain to its formal signing, including a demand by Azerbaijan that Armenia change its constitution.
The peace deal has the potential to transform the South Caucasus, an oil- and gas-rich region and a key transit route connecting Asia and Europe that has gained salience since the war in Ukraine largely shut down trade routes via Russia for European markets.
A planned strategic transit corridor, to be developed exclusively by the United States, is also expected to boost energy exports and bilateral economic ties between Baku and Yerevan.

VIENNA: Austria — one of the European Union members pushing for deportations of Afghans and Syrians — on Tuesday deported an Afghan man, the first such removal since 2021.
The Alpine nation is one of 20 EU member states which have urged the European Commission to take action to enable both voluntary and forced returns of Afghans with no legal right to stay.
In July, it also became the first EU country in recent years to deport a Syrian.
It has since sent two other Syrians back to their home country, where long-time strongman Bashar Assad was ousted in December.
A 31-year-old Afghan, who served four years in jail over a sexual offense and causing grievous bodily harm, was deported from Vienna via Istanbul to Kabul, Austria’s interior ministry said.
This was the first such deportation since summer 2021, it said, adding that more deportations of criminal convicts were being prepared.
Austria’s conservative-led government received Taliban government representatives in Vienna in September, drawing criticism from rights group and the opposition Greens.
The Taliban have been largely isolated on the global stage since they imposed a strict version of Islamic law after they returned to power in Afghanistan in 2021, following the withdrawal of US-led forces.
Lawyers for the Afghan, who came to Austria as an unaccompanied minor, failed to obtain a court order to stop his deportation on the grounds that he suffered “severe psychological impairment,” according to rights group Asylkoordination Austria.
“We are concerned... that there is no follow-up on what actually happens to the people” who are deported, spokesman Lukas Gahleitner-Gertz told AFP.
They could face “torture or inhumane treatment” in their home countries, he said.
The EU said on Monday it has “initiated exploratory contacts” with the Taliban government in Afghanistan, in the face of pressure from EU member states to increase deportations of failed asylum seekers.
Germany has deported more than 100 Afghans since last year.