“We look forward to hosting another round of talks in Washington later this month as the parties continue to pursue a peaceful future for the South Caucasus region,” a U.S. State Department spokesman, Vedant Patel, said on Monday.
European Council President Charles Michel announced the Washington talks, scheduled for June 12, right after last Thursday’s meeting of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that took place in Moldova’s capital Chisinau. Michel indicated that their foreign ministers will prepare for another Armenian-Azerbaijani summit which he will host in Brussels on July 21.
Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov reported major progress towards the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty during four-day negotiations held outside Washington one month ago.
Aliyev and Pashinian tried to build on that progress when they held a trilateral meeting with Michel on May 14. The Armenian leader confirmed afterwards that he is ready to sign a peace deal that will uphold Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The three men were joined by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the subsequent talks in Chisinau. They reported no concrete agreements.
The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, said over the weekend that the peace deal could be signed before the end of this year.
Hakob Badalian, a Yerevan-based political analyst, cautioned on Tuesday that despite Pashinian’s effective recognition of Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan the conflicting sides have yet to eliminate other sticking points. He argued that they still disagree on practical modalities of delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, an international framework for a dialogue between Baku and Karabakh’s leadership and international guarantees for the sides’ compliance with the peace treaty.
Baku’s approach to the border delimitation is very different from Yerevan’s, Badalian said, questioning Aliyev’s readiness to recognize Armenia’s territorial integrity.
Mirzoyan admitted on Monday that Aliyev has still not publicly offered such recognition. “I hope that Azerbaijan’s leadership will come up with such words soon,” the foreign minister told the Armenian parliament.
Armenian opposition leaders say that Baku is reluctant to recognize Armenia’s existing borders even after Pashinian’s far-reaching concession on the status of Karabakh strongly condemned by them.
