Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, and Hikmet Hajiyev, a senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, met in Brussels together with diplomatic advisers to EU chief Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The EU’s special envoy to the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, was also in attendance.
They are understood to have concentrated on preparations for Aliyev’s next meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian which is expected to take place on the sidelines of an EU summit in Granada, Spain on October 5.
A spokeswoman for Michel, Ecaterina Casinge, said Hajiyev and Grigorian discussed “possible concrete steps to advance the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process in the upcoming possible meeting, such as those with regard to border delimitation, security, connectivity, humanitarian issues, and the broader peace treaty.”
“Concrete action and decisive compromise solutions are needed on all tracks of the normalization process,” said Casinge.
“The EU believes that the possible meeting in Granada should be used by both Yerevan and Baku to reiterate publicly their commitment to each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in line with agreements reached previously in Prague and Brussels,” she added in a statement.
Reuters quoted Hajiyev as calling the Brussels meeting “quite constructive” and saying that it increased chances of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal. He did not elaborate.
Armenian parliament speaker Alen Simonian said late on Sunday that Baku and Yerevan are now “very close” to signing a bilateral peace treaty which has been the main focus of Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations over the past year. He did not clarify whether Pashinian’s administration is ready to make more concessions now that Azerbaijan is regaining full control over Karabakh as a result of the September 19-20 offensive.