On 23 November 1919, in Tiflis, at the Palace of the Georgian Government, the prime minister of Armenia, Alexander Khatisian, and the prime minister of Azerbaijan, Nasib bey Yusifbeyli, signed the agreement respecting the district of Zangezur. Witnesses: Georgian foreign minister Evgeni Gegechkori and U.S. Army colonel James C. Rhea, acting Allied High Commissioner. It is not the Treaty of Batum of 1918.

The talks lasted four days, after the Azerbaijani offensive of 4-9 November against Zangezur, which Armenian forces had thrown back. The instrument does not draw the boundary: it defers that question to a conference and, if needed, to an arbiter.

Point 1: the two governments pledge themselves to stop the present hostilities and not resort again to force of arms. Point 2: they agree to take effective measures for repairing and re-opening, for peaceful traffic, the roads leading into Zangezur.

Point 3: all controversies, including boundaries, are to be settled by peaceful agreements pending the decision of the conference in the following paragraph; if that is not possible, a neutral party is to be selected as arbiter, whose decisions both governments agree to abide by, that party for the present being Colonel James C. Rhea, United States Army. Point 4: each government is to appoint immediately an equal number of delegates to meet in conference in Baku on Wednesday, 26 November, and to adjourn to Tiflis on 4 December, unless by common agreement the meetings are transferred elsewhere; the conference is to discuss all questions that cause dispute or friction between the two governments and has full authority to settle them by agreement or arbitration.

Point 5: the agreement becomes effective on the date of signing and becomes permanent when ratified by the parliaments of the two governments. It is signed in triplicate, in English and Russian, one copy of each being delivered to the representative of the Allied High Commissioner, one of each to the prime minister of Armenia, and one of each to the prime minister of Azerbaijan.

It is not the Armeno-Georgian transit treaty of 3 November, not the Nagorno-Karabakh rising of March 1920, and not the sovietisation of Azerbaijan in April 1920.

Image: Signing of the Armenia-Azerbaijan agreement in Tiflis; Asia, the American Magazine on the Orient, August 1920; public domain, Wikimedia Commons. Cropped to 16:9.

Source consulted: Agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan respecting the District of Zanghezour. Treaty text: Agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan respecting the District of Zanghezour, Tiflis, 23 November 1919.