Joshua Huck, the deputy assistant secretary of state for Southern Europe and the Caucasus, met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian on Friday. Pashinian’s press office said they reviewed U.S.-Armenian relations and “discussions on the peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” The Armenian government’s position on opening transport links with Azerbaijan was also on the agenda, the office said in a statement.
Huck was accompanied by Louis Bono, a U.S. special envoy for Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks. They met with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on Thursday.
According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s readout of the meeting, Mirzoyan “stressed the importance” of Yerevan’s proposal to sign an interim peace deal with Baku that would leave out their remaining disagreements. He also mentioned “artificial obstacles” to such an arrangement repeatedly rejected by the Azerbaijani side.
Baku also makes the signing of a peace deal conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution which it says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. Meeting with Huck and Bono on Wednesday, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov again said that the constitution is “the most serious obstacle” to peace between the two South Caucasus neighbors. Bayramov also reportedly complained about Armenia’s “militarization policy.”
According to the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Huck discussed with Bayramov and other senior Azerbaijani officials the “importance of achieving a durable and dignified peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia and recent progress made toward this goal.”
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reiterated his precondition for the peace treaty in a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday. Blinken spoke with Pashinian by phone on September 12.
“We continue to support the efforts of both countries to reach a durable and dignified peace agreement,” the department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told a news briefing later on Monday. He said Washington is ready to host more Armenian-Azerbaijani talks for that purpose.