Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Wednesday that he and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev did not reach any secret agreements to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at their three meetings held in recent months.
Speaking the day after his latest talks with Aliyev held in Davos, Pashinian also insisted that they did not discuss any “concrete detail” of a possible Karabakh settlement.
“We mostly discuss the history of the negotiation process,” he said in a live Facebook address aired from the Swiss resort town. “That is, what happened when, how and at what stage, what the situation was like then, and so on.”
“We certainly also discuss … conditions existing for a settlement, what is possible and what is not. And I want to say in this context that we don’t discuss any concrete detail. We just exchange thoughts,” he said.
Aliyev and Pashinian held what they called an “informal meeting” on Tuesday on the sidelines of the annual World Economic Forum in Davos. They also spoke to each other during two summits of ex-Soviet states held in September and December. Their September conversation was followed by a significant decrease in ceasefire violations around Karabakh and along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers have also held a series of talks in the last several months, most recently in Paris on January 16. According to international mediators, the ministers acknowledged the need for “taking concrete measures to prepare the populations for peace.”
The European Union hailed the high-level negotiations on January 18, saying that they “send a positive signal for progress” in the Karabakh peace process. “The European Union is looking forward to the full implementation of their outcomes,” an EU foreign policy spokeswoman said in a statement.
Russia - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pose for a photograph at a summit in Saint Petersburg, December 6, 2018.
Those developments have fuelled Armenian media and opposition speculation about far-reaching understandings reached by Pashinian and Aliyev. Some critics claim that Pashinian may have agreed to make significant territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
Pashinian brushed aside these “conspiracy theories” in his latest video address. “There can be no conspiracies,” he said. “It’s absurd to even think about that.”
“I want to stress once again that if someone thinks that our government and I personally can engage in or be drawn into any conspiracy then this is the consequence of their failure to understand the situation,” he added.
The premier did not shed more light on his latest conversation with Aliyev. Nor did he say whether they plan to meet again soon.
In Yerevan, meanwhile, the leader of the Bright Armenia Party (BHK), one of the two opposition groups represented in the parliament, called on Pashinian to brief major political forces on his talks with Aliyev.
“At least the leaders of the three parliamentary parties must be informed about what sort of negotiations [with Azerbaijan] are going on,” Edmon Marukian told RFE/RL’s Armenian service.
Marukian said the government should thus “share responsibility” for Karabakh talks with other political forces. “This is a pan-Armenian kind of issue and a burden which the head of the government should not carry single-handedly,” he said.
A leading member of Pashinian’s My Step alliance, deputy parliament speaker Lena Nazarian, insisted that the government will consult with the public as well as Karabakh’s leadership before making “any decision.” She also said that Yerevan will not make disproportionate concessions to Baku under external pressure.
“External forces have no leverage to force these authorities to make decisions undesirable for our country and society,” said Nazarian.