Answering questions sent in by the public during a live TV broadcast, Pashinian referred to his meetings with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev that were held with the mediation of European Council President Charles Michel in May and July.
The Armenian premier reiterated the three principles, including mutual recognition of territorial integrity and borders, border delimitation based on a 1991 declaration signed by a dozen former Soviet republics, including Armenia and Azerbaijan, after the collapse of the USSR, and the sovereign jurisdictions of the states over transportation links passing through their territories.
“Now we cannot say with certainty that Azerbaijan refuses to sign a peace agreement based on these three principles, but we cannot say with certainty that Azerbaijan reaffirms its commitment to these three principles either. There is a need to clarify these issues and nuances during the negotiations,” Pashinian.
Azerbaijan appears to have avoided Western platforms for negotiations with Armenia after Azerbaijani forces recaptured the whole of Nagorno-Karabakh in a one-day military operation on September 19, causing more than 100,000 people, virtually the entire local Armenian population, to flee to Armenia.
Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev 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.
European Council President Charles Michel hosts talks between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels, May 14, 2023.
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.
In doing so Azerbaijan recently offered to hold direct talks with Armenia, including at the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
Pashinian reaffirmed today that a meeting of the two countries’ officials engaged in border delimitation and demarcation activities will be held at a yet undisclosed location along the state frontier on November 30.
He said that Yerevan will draw conclusions from those discussions as to whether “Azerbaijan is ready for peace based on those principles or whether Azerbaijan rejects those principles.”
“We don’t have that confidence until today,” Pashinian said.
The Armenian leader did not say whether Yerevan also considers direct negotiations with Azerbaijan at the highest level.
On Thursday, Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mnatsakan Safarian said that there are issues in negotiations “where the presence of mediators is mandatory and plays a very important role.”
“For example, issues related to the rights of the population forcibly displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh. The existence of international mechanisms is important here. There are also other issues where guarantees are important,” the senior Armenian diplomat said.
Armenia’s former President Serzh Sarkisian, meanwhile, warned that Yerevan should not engage in direct talks with Baku. He said such a format will deadlock the negotiation process.
Former Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian
He also warned that a peace agreement foisted on Armenia will also amount to a “surrender.”
Sarkisian claimed that if Pashinian is going to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan the way “as we see it now,” it will make him a “double capitulant” after the “surrender” that the ex-president alleged Pashinian signed in 2020 to stop the war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
“Because unjust peace is a reason for a new war,” Sarkisian said.
Pashinian and members of his political team routinely deny that the Russia-brokered 2020 ceasefire agreement with Azerbaijan amounted to a surrender. They, in turn, accuse Sarkisian and his predecessor Robert Kocharian of being the ones who paved the way for the military defeat in Nagorno-Karabakh by leaving a legacy of conflict and a “corruption-stricken” army and state to their government.