Pashinian and Aliyev met in Moldova’s capital Chisinau on Thursday on the sidelines of a European summit. They were joined by EU chief Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. No concrete agreements were announced as a result.
Michel said the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders will meet again in Brussels on July 21. According to Pashinian, their foreign ministers will hold fresh talks in Washington on June 12 in preparation for the next summit.
“On the whole, I consider the discussion useful,” Pashinian told a group of ethnic Armenians from Moldova and Ukraine in Chisinau later in the evening.
He did not clarify whether the conflicting parties narrowed their differences on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. He said Baku now seems to accept an Armenian proposal to use 1975 Soviet maps as a basis for delimiting and demarcating the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Aliyev last week insisted that the border demarcation must be carried out on Baku’s terms and warned of fresh military action against Armenia. Yerevan condemned his threats.
Baku also shed little light on the Chisinau talks. The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry on Friday accused Macron’s office of misrepresenting them. But it did not specify which concrete parts of a French readout of the talks “distort the positions of the parties.”
In a late-night statement, the presidential Elysee Palace said Aliyev and Pashinian “reaffirmed mutual respect for the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and Armenia.” It also said the European leaders “stressed the importance of defining rights and guarantees for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh.”