Pashinyan says Armenia, Azerbaijan will not deploy foreign forces on border after peace deal

(Reuters) - Armenia and Azerbaijan will not deploy third-country forces along their border after the two sides sign a peace agreement, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Thursday.

Officials in Yerevan and Baku said earlier they had agreed the text of a peace agreement to end more than three decades of conflict between their countries, a sudden breakthrough in a fitful and often bitter peace process.

Russian peacekeepers completed a withdrawal last May from Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan that had a mostly Armenian population and which Azeri forces recaptured in a lightning offensive in September 2023. But Moscow still has personnel in Armenia along its long border with Azerbaijan.

The European Union also has a monitoring mission in Armenia, whose mandate it has extended until February 2027.

(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Lucy Papachristou; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)