Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan expressed hope on Thursday that he and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev will move closer to a peace treaty between their countries at their next meeting slated for Saturday.
“My meeting with the president of the European Union Council [Charles Michel] and the president of Azerbaijan is scheduled to take place in Brussels on Saturday, July 15,” Pashinyan told a weekly cabinet meeting in Yerevan.
“I have confirmed my participation in the meeting and hope to make progress towards the peace treaty during the meeting,” he said.
The Brussels meeting was originally scheduled for July 21. It is not clear why it was brought forward.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with Pashinyan and Aliyev by phone earlier this week. He said he told them that the United States remains committed to facilitating an Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement.
According to the U.S. State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, during his call with Aliyev, Blinken stressed “the need for creativity, flexibility, and compromise in the negotiations” and reiterated U.S. calls for the lifting of Azerbaijan’s seven-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Washington hosted late last month another round of peace talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers. Pashinyan cautioned last week that progress made by them was “not significant.”
“Unfortunately, the text of the peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan is not yet ready for signing,” he said.
Speaking in Baku on Tuesday, Aliyev underscored the significance of Armenia’s recognition of Azerbaijani sovereignty over Karabakh which was declared by Pashinyan in May. “Now, however, the time has come to put those words to paper,” he said.
Source: Azatutyun.am
