“The parties agreed to continue negotiations on open issues where there are still differences,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on the talks held in Almaty.
The statement did not specify those differences. Nor did it indicate that Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov made major progress towards the peace deal.
Mirzoyan has repeatedly complained in recent months that Baku remains reluctant to recognize Armenia’s borders through the treaty. Another apparent sticking point is continuing Azerbaijani demands for an extraterritorial corridor that would connect to Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave through a strategic Armenian region.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also demanded last month that Armenia change its constitution. This, he said, is a “precondition” for the signing of the peace deal.
Mirzoyan’s latest talks with Bayramov came amid antigovernment protest in Yerevan sparked by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s decision to hand over several key border areas to Azerbaijan portrayed by him as the start of the Armenian-Azerbaijan border delimitation. According to the Foreign Ministry statement, the two ministers “welcomed progress made on the delimitation issue.”
Aliyev on Friday described that the planned land handover as “yet another victory” for Azerbaijan. “We showed the enemy its place, and today the enemy is powerless against us,” he said.