“We presented Azerbaijan with our proposals regarding the normalization of relations or a draft peace treaty and received their reply only yesterday,” Mirzoyan told the Armenpress news agency. “Thus discussions are continuing.”
“We hope to reach an agreement on this issue as soon as possible, and mediation efforts by our international partners could also play an important role in this process,” he said.
Mirzoyan again declined to disclose the proposals which he presented to his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov in Washington on November 7. Nor did he say whether they were accepted by the Azerbaijani side.
Earlier this year, Baku put forward five key elements of the peace treaty acceptable to it. They include mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity.
The Azerbaijani reply reported by Mirzoyan came two days after Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev cancelled a meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian which was due to take place in Brussels on December 7. He complained that Pashinian wants French President Emmanuel Macron to also participate in it along with European Union chief Charles Michel.
Aliyev claimed that Pashinian set that condition in order to drag out the negotiating process and prevent the signing of the peace treaty.
Mirzoyan dismissed the claim. He said that when Aliyev and Pashinian met in Prague on October 6 in the presence of both Michel and Macron they agreed that the French leader will also attend their meeting in Brussels.
The minister suggested that Aliyev may be preparing the ground for another escalation in the conflict zone. The situation there is already “extremely tense,” he said.
Tensions along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the “line of contact” in and around Nagorno-Karabakh have increased in recent days, with the two sides accusing each other of violating the ceasefire on a daily basis.
Karabakh’s Defense Army reported that two of its soldiers were wounded by Azerbaijani forces on Monday.