“The discussion was extensive, the discussion was not easy,” he said the day after the talks hosted by European Council President Charles Michel in Brussels.
Pashinian reaffirmed the Armenian government’s commitment to its “peace agenda” declared after the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“We all need to understand that it’s not easy and simple and that possible solutions are not obvious,” he added at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan. “We need to continue our consistent work.”
Michel said late on Wednesday that Aliyev and Pashinian agreed to intensify negotiations on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty sought by Baku. The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers will meet in September to “work on draft texts,” he said in a statement.
“Clearly, Azerbaijan will try to secure solutions maximally beneficial for it,” said Vigen Khachatrian, an Armenian pro-government parliamentarian. “Our objective is the opposite. Our aim is to guarantee the territorial integrity of Armenia and the kind of conditions for the people of Artsakh that would not jeopardize their life in their homeland.”
The Azerbaijani side did not publicly comment on the results of what was Michel’s fourth trilateral meeting with the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders in nine months. Aliyev’s chief foreign policy aide, Hikmet Hajiyev, praised the top European Union official’s efforts to “facilitate bilateral peace treaty talks.”
Azerbaijan wants Armenia to recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh through such a treaty.
Armenian opposition leaders claimed that Wednesday’s talks in Brussels brought Baku closer to achieving this goal.
Armenia - Opposition deputy Hayk Mamijanian attends a parliament session, September 13, 2021.
“Every negotiation conducted by Pashinian presupposes losses,” said Hayk Mamijanian of the opposition Pativ Unem alliance. “They could be territorial losses or losses in terms of security guarantees.”
“The whole negotiating process bypasses the issues of Karabakh’s status, prisoners of war and the withdrawal [of Azerbaijani forces] from Armenian territory and is based on the logic of selling out our lands and homeland,” he told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
An Armenian government statement on the Brussels talks said the return of Armenian soldiers and civilians remaining in Azerbaijani captivity was also on the agenda. Michel said in this regard that he “stressed to Azerbaijan the importance of further release of Armenian detainees.”
“Having essentially accepted the enemy's latest orders, Nikol continues to talk about the so-called peace agenda,” charged Ishkhan Saghatelian, a leader of the other parliamentary opposition force, Hayastan.
In a Facebook post, Saghatelian urged Armenians to attend the next anti-government rally which Hayastan and Pativ Unem will hold in Yerevan on Friday. He said they must show Pashinian and the international community that “the Armenian nation has not abandoned Artsakh.”
The opposition blocs launched daily street protests on May 1 two weeks after Pashinian signaled his readiness to recognize Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and “lower the bar” on Karabakh’s status acceptable to the Armenian side. They scaled back the protests six week later after failing to unseat the prime minister.