Baerbock met with her Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan for talks on Armenia’s relations with Germany and the European Union as well as efforts to end the conflict with Azerbaijan.
“Thank you very much for this visit,” Mirzoyan told her in his opening remarks.
“For me, this is not a visit but a stopover at a friend’s place,” replied the top German diplomat. “It was very important for me to stop by.”
“We know not only that the climate crisis is a threat to security and peace. But we know also these days how important it is to ensure peace,” she said, adding that she is “keen to hear about the latest developments” in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said afterwards that Mirzoyan briefed Baerbock on “the work carried out towards finalizing the draft Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty” and stressed the importance of signing it soon.
Last month, Yerevan reportedly proposed that the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers hold two-day intensive talks to iron out their remaining differences and sign the treaty before COP29 which began on November 11. No such talks took place.
Baku makes the signing of any peace deal conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution which it says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan. A senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev repeated this precondition in a newspaper interview publicized on Wednesday.
“Even if the parties manage to agree on the text of the peace treaty, Armenia's legal and constitutional framework must be brought into line with it so that the treaty can be implemented not only under the current but also under future [Armenian] governments,” said Elchin Amirbayov.
In recent months, Mirzoyan and other Armenian officials have expressed concern that Azerbaijan could invade Armenia after hosting the UN summit on climate change.