“We do think a deal is possible, but it requires both sides to make some difficult choices and tough compromises, and so what we’re going to do is continue to push them to resolve those final differences and reach an agreement,” the department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told a news briefing in Washington. He did not elaborate.
The Armenian government did not react to the statement as of Tuesday afternoon. Representatives of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s Civil Contract party likewise declined to comment.
Armenian opposition lawmakers insisted, meanwhile, that the U.S. is first and foremost trying to get Armenia to make even more concessions to Azerbaijan.
“What else do we have to concede that we haven't conceded yet?” said Artur Khachatrian of the Hayastan alliance. “[Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan said it the day the before Miller. It’s the so-called Zangezur corridor [to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.]”
“We have nothing more to concede,” Khachatrian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “We can only concede one thing: Nikol Pashinian. They can take him if they want.”
Tigran Abrahamian, a senior lawmaker from another opposition bloc, Pativ Unem, also suggested that Washington is pushing Yerevan to give ground to Baku on the issue of the corridor that would pass through a strategic Armenian region. He dismissed U.S. statements in support of Armenian sovereignty over this and other transit routes.
“In the same way, the United States declared that it supports Armenia’s territorial integrity. But in 2021 and 2022 Azerbaijan seized territory Armenian sovereignty over which is beyond doubt,” said Abrahamian.
Both opposition groups have strongly condemned Pashinian’s previous major concessions to Azerbaijan, notably the recent handover of several disputed border areas that sparked mass antigovernment protests in Yerevan. They say that his appeasement policy will only encourage Baku to demand more Armenian concessions.
Miller’s comments came less than a week after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted talks in Washington between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers. According to the U.S. State Department, Blinken urged the two sides to take “further steps to finalize a deal as soon as possible.” The sides signaled no breakthrough towards the agreement.
“We have made progress,” Miller said in this regard. “I’m not going to speak to it in detail. But we don’t have an agreement yet, and we’re not going to rest until we reach one.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov reiterated in the run-up to the Washington talks that the signing of the peace treaty is conditional of Armenia changing its constitution which they say contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
