After a closed-door meeting in parliament with the Armenian prime minister and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan late on Friday, Hovik Aghazarian, a parliamentarian and senior member of Pashinian’s Civil Contract party, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that key topics discussed at the October 24 talks held on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, included the restoration of cargo transportation as well as issued related to border demarcation and the ongoing work toward a peace treaty.
He said that based on the evaluations made by Pashinian and Mirzoyan, “it can be concluded that it was productive and very useful.”
“There was a certain level of sincere conversation. Importantly, both sides were ready to engage without anyone’s mediation. They talked for 1.5 hours, and a lot of topics can be addressed in that time,” Aghazarian said.
The Armenian government has issued few details about the prime minister’s meeting with members of his political team. A source has told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that the Kazan negotiations included discussions on the peace treaty, the continuation of the border demarcation process as well as regional unblocking. It was revealed earlier this year that the sides had mutually consented to remove the issue of unblocking from the draft peace agreement.
Over the past two months, Yerevan has been advocating for the signing of a formal agreement on the key points that have already been agreed upon by the sides, while Baku has insisted on signing only a fully agreed text of the treaty, also linking it to the need for amendments to the Armenian Constitution that Azerbaijan contends contains territorial claims against it.
Armenia denies that the reference in the preamble of its Constitution to the 1990 Declaration of Independence that, in turn, cites a 1989 unification act adopted by the legislative bodies of Soviet Armenia and the then Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast amounts to territorial claims against Azerbaijan.
The only legal way to scrap the preamble is to enact a new constitution. Pashinian and his political team have indicated that they will try to do that in 2027. They have said at the same time that the preamble has no legal impact on the current Armenian government’s recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region over which Armenia and Azerbaijan waged two major wars in the past three decades before Baku established full control of this territory in 2023, causing its entire ethnic Armenian population to flee to Armenia.
Meanwhile, RFE/RL’s Armenian Service’s source also indicated that Pashinian and Mirzoyan told their political allies on October 25 that some progress was also made in Kazan on the points of the draft treaty over which the sides continue to have differences.
While no details have been disclosed yet, but Aghazarian confirmed that at the negotiations the sides did refer to issues related to unblocking, and more specifically to the restoration of cargo transportation.
“For several years, there have been concerns about the possibility of ensuring the security of trains passing through the territories of the two countries without the presence of a third party, namely Russia. That’s why the conclusion was that things should be started with cargo transportation and relations should be gradually developed in that direction. That’s very important,” the pro-government lawmaker said.
The issue of opening the railway was being actively discussed by the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in 2021-22 during negotiations mediated by Charles Michel, president of the European Council. An agreement was even announced at that time stating that border and customs control should operate on the principle of reciprocity.
The Armenian government even made preliminary calculations estimating that the construction of the railway would cost $200 million. However, the Armenian side expected agreements to be documented before construction began, which did not happen.
During this period, Baku continued to promote the so-called Zangezur Corridor agenda, with Yerevan insisting that any extraterritorial logic behind the road through its southern Syunik region would be a red line for it.
Despite reported discussions on restored cargo transportation, Aghazarian cautioned that it was too early to talk about Azerbaijan abandoning its agenda of securing a corridor through Armenia to its western Nakhichevan exclave, which Armenia would not control.
“Their goal is ‘Western Azerbaijan’, and we are fighting to thwart such goals,” Aghazarian emphasized, referring to repeated statements made in Baku at different levels about “historical Azerbaijani lands” in modern-day Armenia.
The source has also told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that during their talks in Kazan, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan reached no specific agreement on the possible conclusion of a peace treaty.
The United States and other international partners of Armenia and Azerbaijan have repeatedly expressed their support for a peace treaty between the two South Caucasus nations, encouraging them to finalize it already this year.