Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry called on November 21 for direct negotiations with Armenia in a “mutually acceptable” venue, including at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Baku’s call came after what appears to be Baku’s rejection of Western mediation efforts in the process of settling relations with Armenia.
It also followed the announcement by Armenia’s Foreign Ministry that Yerevan had submitted another proposal on a peace agreement to Azerbaijan following Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s call on November 18 for “intensifying diplomatic efforts to achieve the signing of a peace treaty.”
In its statement today the Armenian Foreign Ministry emphasized that official Yerevan is ready to re-engage in negotiations, having as a benchmark “mutual recognition and respect for each other’s territorial integrity without ambiguities, implementation of the further border delimitation based on the [1991] Alma-Ata Declaration and the latest legitimate Soviet maps, the unblocking of the region’s infrastructures based on the principles of full respect for the sovereignty, jurisdiction, reciprocity and equality of the states.”
It said that “despite all the complications and challenges” official Yerevan sees “a real possibility of establishing peace between the two countries, which can be realized if there is political will on both sides, and the Armenian side has that will.”
The Armenian ministry stressed that “one of the expressions of this will is also the fact that Armenia proposed to Azerbaijan to hold a meeting of border delimitation commissions on the state frontier between the two countries.”
Earlier, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of delaying its reply to Baku’s proposal on a peace agreement submitted to Yerevan in September for more than two months.
Stressing that Yerevan submitted its sixth proposal related to the draft peace agreement to Baku on November 21, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said: “While, after receiving the latest Azerbaijani proposals, Armenia was considering them and was ready to continue negotiations on the draft agreement, on September 19 Azerbaijan carried out a large-scale military attack against the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, which led to the forced displacement of the entire Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The Azerbaijani leadership appeared to be avoiding meetings with the Armenian side held with Western mediation after Baku established full control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the one-day lightening offensive in September.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian were scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the EU’s October 5 summit in Granada, Spain, for talks mediated by French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and European Council President Charles Michel.
Pashinian had hoped that they would sign there a document laying out the main parameters of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. However, Aliyev withdrew from the talks at the last minute.
Baku cited France’s allegedly “biased position” against Azerbaijan as the reason for skipping those talks in Spain.
The Azerbaijani leader also appears to have canceled another meeting which the EU’s Michel planned to host in Brussels in late October.
Most recently Azerbaijan refused to attend a meeting with Armenia at the level of foreign ministers in Washington after allegedly “one-sided and biased” remarks by a senior U.S. official made during a congressional hearing on Nagorno-Karabakh. That meeting had reportedly been scheduled to take place on November 20.
The Armenian ministry also stressed today that the Azerbaijani side did not participate in the meetings at the level of the countries’ leaders first in Granada and then in Brussels.
It said that “those five-way and three-way meetings had previously been agreed upon, and Yerevan considered it to be more efficient to present [its latest proposals] to Azerbaijan during those meetings.”
“Nevertheless, in order to prevent attempts to deadlock the negotiation process and achieve lasting peace in our region, the Republic of Armenia constructively conveyed its observations on the [draft] agreement,” the statement said.