Kazakh President Kasim-Zhomart Tokayev offered to “provide a platform” for such talks when he visited Yerevan last week. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev revealed afterwards that Astana is specifically ready to organize a meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers. He said Baku backs the idea.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry signaled on Friday that Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan is ready to meet his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov in Kazakhstan. It said that no date has been agreed for the talks yet.
“Armenia considers and favors mediation efforts or negotiation platforms that are really aimed at achieving lasting peace in the South Caucasus and support Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s recognition of each other's territorial integrity and border delimitation process based on fundamental principles and mutually agreed documents, including the 1991 the Alma-Ata declaration,” read a ministry statement.
Mirzoyan and Bayramov most recently met in Berlin in February. They did not make significant progress towards the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Mirzoyan repeatedly complained afterwards that Baku remains reluctant to formally recognize Armenia’s borders and keeps demanding an extraterritorial corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.
Aliyev publicly reiterated that demand on Tuesday. He also said that Armenia must change its constitution if it wants to sign the peace accord.
The Azerbaijani leader demanded those concessions after forcing Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s government to agree to hand over four disputed border areas to Azerbaijan. The unilateral concession sparked angry protests by residents of nearby Armenian border villages concerned about their security.
Armenian opposition leaders and other critics of Pashinian have strongly condemned him for bowing to the Azerbaijani pressure, saying that will only encourage Baku to demand more territory from Armenia.