In an interview with Public Television aired on Tuesday evening Secretary of Armenia’s Security Council Armen Grigorian reminded that Azerbaijan had refused to attend a meeting of the two countries’ leaders that was planned to be held with the European Union’s mediation in Brussels in late October.
“We are ready to continue negotiations in this [Brussels] format to finalize the peace treaty and sign it by the end of the year if it is possible. There is also a possibility of continuing such negotiations at another level, for instance, in Washington. Armenia is ready, and let’s hope that such a meeting will take place,” Grigorian said.
The official reminded that Louis Bono, a U.S. special envoy for Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks, recently visited the region.
“He was discussing possible meetings. Of course, it is not final, but one of the goals of the visit was to organize a meeting,” Grigorian said.
Asked why such a meeting could not be organized in Moscow, Grigorian said: “We go where we consider it important, where we see an opportunity at the moment and from where we have received clear offers. I am not aware of any offers from Moscow.”
Commenting on a series of decisions by official Yerevan to skip major gatherings of Russia-led groupings, including the latest decision by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian not to attend an upcoming summit of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk, Grigorian emphasized that Armenia had been asking help from the CSTO since May 2021, but did not receive the necessary assistance to protect its sovereign territory against Azerbaijani aggression.
“We have had numerous questions to the CSTO, answers to which we have not received till now. And this is also the reason why Armenia does not participate in the CSTO [sessions],” the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council said.
Earlier this year Armenia also refused to participate in CSTO military drills, while hosting joint military drills with the United States in Yerevan.
Pashinian also declined to attend a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a wider and looser grouping of ex-Soviet states, in Kyrgyzstan on October 13.
These and other similar moves by Yerevan have increasingly been seen in Russia, which dominates the CSTO, as “unfriendly.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry last week accused Pashinian’s administration of systematically “destroying” Russian-Armenian relations, a claim dismissed in Yerevan.
Tensions between Armenia and Russia rose further after Azerbaijan’s September 19-20 military offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh that led to the exodus of the region’s virtually entire ethnic Armenian population. Armenia, in particular, blamed Russian peacekeepers deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh under a 2020 ceasefire agreement between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan for failing to protect the local Armenians.
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that it “regrets” Pashinian’s latest decision not to attend the upcoming CSTO summit, while a spokesperson for Alyaksandr Lukashenka, the formal host of the gathering in Minsk, said that during their phone call earlier this week the Belarusian leader warned the Armenian prime minister against making “hasty decisions”, suggesting that he “should seriously think over his next steps that could be aimed at disintegration.”
Despite the deepening rift in relations between Yerevan and Moscow, Pashinian has so far announced no plans to pull his country out of the CSTO or demand the withdrawal of Russian troops stationed in Armenia.
In the November 14 interview with Armenia’s Public Television Security Council Secretary Grigorian repeated what Pashinian and other Armenian officials have said before, saying that “it is not Armenia that is quitting the CSTO, but it is the CSTO that is quitting the region.”
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