Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian insisted on Tuesday that he and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov did not discuss in detail international mediators’ existing peace proposals on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict when they last met in April.
The meeting was hosted in Moscow by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The three top diplomats were joined by the U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group after conferring in a trilateral format.
“The foreign ministers did not hold negotiations on any document in Moscow,” Nalbandian said, denying Mammadyarov’s effective claims to the contrary made on Monday. “If there was any text discussed there, it was the text of a [joint] press release that was agreed by the ministers in the presence of the co-chairs.”
“It was then published by Russia’s and Armenia’s foreign ministries, while the Azerbaijani foreign ministry published its own version,” he told a joint news conference with Estonia’s visiting Foreign Minister Sven Mikser.
Armenia -- Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian (R) and his Estonian counterpart Sven Mikser at a joint press conference in Yerevan, 13 June, 2017.
The April 28 statement cited by Nalbandian said that the participants of the Moscow talks “stressed the need to fulfill” confidence-building agreements that were reached by Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s presidents last year. The agreements call for specific measures to shore up the shaky ceasefire regime in the conflict zone.
The Azerbaijani government is reluctant to put those truce safeguards into practice, saying that they could cement the status quo. The Armenian side maintains that progress in substantive peace talks is contingent on introduction of mechanisms for preventing serious ceasefire violations.
Nalbandian told the Minsk Group co-chairs that they should take “concrete actions” to force Azerbaijan to de-escalate the conflict when he met with them in Yerevan on Saturday. He claimed on Tuesday that the mediating powers are finally realizing the need for “appropriate steps” against Baku.