In a short statement, the Armenian government said Pashinian and Burns discussed “international and regional security,” “processes taking place in the South Caucasus” and “the fight against terrorism.”
The statement gave no other details of the meeting which was also attended by Armen Abazian, the head of Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS).
Burns also held separate talks with Armen Grigorian, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council.
The council’s press office reported that Grigorian briefed him on the Armenian government’s peace efforts and security challenges facing the region. It said the two men discussed Yerevan’s ongoing negotiations with Azerbaijan and Turkey “in this context.”
Burns had visited Armenia as well as Azerbaijan in 2011 in his capacity as U.S. deputy secretary of state. He urged at the time a greater “sense of urgency” for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that “the status quo is not sustainable.”
His latest trip to Yerevan coincided with an official announcement that the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will meet in Tbilisi on Saturday.
Armenia - Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian greets CIA Director William Burns, Yerevan, July 15, 2022.
The trip was first revealed by the Russian news agency Sputnik earlier in the day. It said the CIA chief arrived for unspecified “high-level meetings” and will spend only several hours in the country.
The Armenian authorities did not confirm or deny the report before issuing the official press releases on Burns’s meetings. An NSS spokesman told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that he has “no information” about his visit.
The U.S. Embassy likewise declined to comment. No CIA director has ever visited Armenia before.
Tigran Grigorian, an independent political analyst, claimed that U.S. and Russian security officials arrived in Armenia in recent days for confidential talks focusing on the war in Ukraine.
“Based on the scarce information available, one can presume that Yerevan or Armenia was simply chosen as the venue for some secret negotiations with Russia,” Grigorian said. “According to my information, Russian and American experts arrived in Yerevan for that purpose in recent days. So Burns’s visit could be put in that context.”
Burns, 66, is a former career diplomat who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008.