Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, told Armenian Public Television that this was the main focus of U.S. special envoy Louis Bono’s meetings with him and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan held earlier in the day. He did not say whether Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov has agreed to meet with Mirzoyan in Washington anytime soon.
Baku cancelled Bayramov’s November 20 trilateral meeting with Mirzoyan and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in protest against what it called pro-Armenian statements made by James O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia. O’Brien visited Baku in early December in a bid to convince the Azerbaijani leadership to reschedule it.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy aide, Hikmet Hajiyev, said afterwards that Washington must reconsider its “one-sided approach” to the conflict before it can mediate more peace talks. Later in December, Bayramov said he has offered to meet with Mirzoyan on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border without third-party mediation.
Despite holding no face-to-face negotiations in recent months, Baku and Yerevan have exchanged more written proposals on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty discussed by them. According to Grigorian, the Armenian side responded to the most recent Azerbaijani proposals on January 4.
The official did not disclose that reply. He indicated only that Baku has toughened its position on some key points of the peace accord.
“There are issues that were agreed upon during verbal negotiations, but we have seen some steps backwards in the [Azerbaijani] text of the peace treaty,” Grigorian said without elaborating. “But there are also points on which we made progress.”
Azerbaijani officials said last month that the two sides should sign the treaty before delimiting the long Armenian-Azerbaijani border, raising more fears in Yerevan that Baku remains reluctant to formally recognize Armenia’s territorial integrity. Mirzoyan insisted that the treaty should contain a concrete mechanism for the border delimitation.
In recent weeks, Baku has also renewed its demands for the opening of an extraterritorial corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave via Armenia. Yerevan has repeatedly rejected such demands before.