Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov spoke of such signals coming from Yerevan ahead of Wednesday’s session of a Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani task force working on the restoration of transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He expressed hope that they will translate into “concrete results” soon but did not go into details.
Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s office and the Armenian Foreign Ministry had no comment on Bayramov’s remarks. Pro-government lawmakers also declined to say what signals, if any, were sent to Baku.
Earlier this week, Azerbaijan released and repatriated five more Armenian soldiers taken prisoner during or shortly after last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“I think that ‘velvet’ messages sent by the Armenian authorities are clearly pleasing the Turks and the Azerbaijanis,” said Tatul Hakobian, a veteran political analyst. “They are therefore trying not to use very tough rhetoric [against Armenia,] even if their actions suggest that they are sticking to their tough positions.”
“It’s hard to tell what understandings have been reached,” Hakobian told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service. “But it is obvious that there is a certain process which is leading to some understandings.”
The Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani working group co-headed by deputy prime ministers of the three states did not announce any agreements in a statement on its latest meeting in Moscow issued late on Wednesday. It said the three parties agreed to meet again soon.
RUSSIA -- Russian President Vladimir Putin (C), Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian (R) and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev deliver a joint statement following their talks in Moscow, January 11, 2021.
The trilateral group has been discussing practical modalities of opening the Armenian-Azerbaijani border for commercial traffic in line with the Russian-brokered ceasefire that stopped the Karabakh war last November.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has repeatedly claimed that the deal envisages a permanent land “corridor” that will connect the Nakhichevan exclave to the rest of Azerbaijan via Armenia’s Syunik province also bordering Iran. He has threatened to forcibly open such a corridor if the Armenian side continues to oppose its creation.
Armenian leaders have denounced Aliyev’s threats as territorial claims, saying that the truce accord only calls for transport links between the two South Caucasus states.
“I repeat that the issue of providing corridors is not discussed,” Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigorian told journalists before flying to Moscow on Tuesday.
Aliyev claimed, meanwhile, that Azerbaijan is succeeding in securing the “Zangezur corridor.”
IRAN - A handout photo shows an explosion during a military exercise by the Iranian Army in the northwest of Iran, close to the border with Azerbaijan, October 1, 2021.
His stance and rhetoric have also prompted concern from Iran. Earlier this month, a senior Iranian parliamentarian accused Aliyev of trying to “cut Iran’s access to Armenia” with the help of Turkey and Israel.
In an October 11 editorial, the official Iranian news agency IRNA said that the idea of the “Zangezur corridor” is part of a “hidden plan to change the borders” of Armenia and Iran.
“This would result in the elimination of Iran's land border with Armenia and Iran’s exclusion from this important route for international transport in the northwest,” it wrote, adding that a recent Iranian military exercise was a warning to “adventurers from inside and outside the region trying to diminish the Islamic Republic’s geopolitical role.”