“Secretary Blinken commended both ministers on the progress Armenia and Azerbaijan have made toward a durable and dignified peace and encouraged continued progress by both countries to finalize an agreement as soon as possible,” said Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department spokesman.
“The Secretary underscored that a peace agreement would bring increased stability and prosperity to the region,” Miller added in a short statement.
“The parties agreed to put additional efforts towards the conclusion of the Agreement on Peace and Establishment of Interstate Relations in the shortest possible period,” the Armenian Foreign Ministry said for its part.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry issued a similar readout of the talks.
The official statements did not clarify whether Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov made more progress towards the peace treaty. Their latest meeting came more than a week after Blinken’s separate phone calls with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
According to Pashinian, Baku and Yervan fully agree on the preamble and 13 of the 16 articles of the draft treaty. He has repeatedly suggested in recent weeks that the two sides sign a deal that will contain these provisions and leave out their remaining differences.
“The Armenian side has proposed to sign already agreed articles of the peace treaty before the COP29 in Baku [scheduled for November,’]” Pashinian said at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
Aliyev again rejected the proposal earlier this week. 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.