“As we reported earlier, there are proposals for meetings, and now there are also agreements,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
The ministry promised to inform about the specific date of such talks additionally.
Maria Zakharova, an official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said earlier on Thursday that there is already an agreement to hold a trilateral ministerial meeting in Russia. She said the date of such a meeting would be announced later.
The planned meeting comes amid heightened tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Lachin Corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia.
Azerbaijan set up a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor on April 23, drawing accusations from Yerevan and Stepanakert that it violates the terms of the Moscow-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement that ended a bloody six-week Armenian-Azerbaijani war over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The deal brought about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to the region to protect some 120,000 ethnic Armenians living there, including their free movement along a five-kilometer-wide land strip that connects Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia and is known as the Lachin Corridor.
Azerbaijan’s installation of a checkpoint, which also drew concerns from Western powers, tightened what already was an effective blockade of the region by government-backed Azerbaijani protesters since December.
Speaking at a joint press conference with his visiting French counterpart Catherine Colonna in Baku today, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov claimed that Azerbaijan installed the checkpoint on the Lachin road after “Yerevan ignored Baku’s calls to stop illegal use of the road.”
“The Lachin road is open and will remain open,” he claimed, echoing his ministry’s earlier pledge that all “necessary conditions” will be created for “a transparent and orderly passage of Armenian residents living in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan” in both directions.
Speaking in Baku, Colonna called for the re-opening of the Lachin Corridor and urged Azerbaijan to comply with a relevant order by the International Court of Justice that ruled in February that the Azerbaijani government must “take all measures at its disposal to ensure unimpeded movement of persons, vehicles and cargo along the Lachin Corridor in both directions.”
She said Azerbaijan should also take into account the positions of the United States and France regarding the matter.
In separate statements on April 23, when Azerbaijan began building its checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor, Washington and Paris voiced their concerns that the development could fuel further tensions and undermine peace efforts between Yerevan and Baku.
The French minister was expected to arrive in Armenia later on April 27 for meetings with the country’s leadership focused on the latest developments in the region.
Before that, speaking at a cabinet session in Yerevan today, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian urged Azerbaijan and Russia to abide by the terms of the 2020 ceasefire that calls for only Russian presence and control in the Lachin Corridor. He also called for a broader international presence in Nagorno-Karabakh as “the only reliable way” of preventing “ethnic cleansings” against the region’s Armenian population.