The European Union plans to organize more negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan to follow up on understandings reached by their leaders in Brussels on Wednesday, according to a senior EU diplomat.
Azatutyun.am – “What will actually happen very practically is that we’re going to be having very regular meetings and a continued role of facilitation for the EU,” the diplomat privy to the talks told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
During their trilateral meeting with European Council President Charles Michel, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev decided to instruct their foreign ministers to start official negotiations on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
They also agreed to set up before the end of this month a joint commission on demarcating the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
“I’m fully conscious when I say that there’s not much time left,” said the diplomat. “I think we will need to be following up quite quickly with this. And I think there is an expectation that we would look to have a meeting at leaders’ level relatively soon to review progress and tackle any outstanding issues that are blocking the moves forward.”
The source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, gave no possible dates for the next Aliyev-Pashinian encounter.
Michel described the four-hour talks hosted by him as “productive,” saying that they yielded “concrete and tangible results.”
Critics in Armenia point out that the top EU official made no mention of Nagorno-Karabakh, let alone an agreement on its status or the Karabakh Armenians’ right to self-determination. They say this is a further sign that Pashinian is ready to agree to Azerbaijani control over the disputed territory.
Pashinian reiterated on Thursday that Baku’s proposals on the treaty, including a mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity, are acceptable to Yerevan. But he said the question of Karabakh’s status must also be on the agenda of the talks on the peace treaty.
The European diplomat suggested that this will likely be the case, pointing to Michel’s remark that the planned treaty “would address all necessary issues.”
“I think you can see that the phrase … ‘would address all necessary issues’ in the statement [by Michel] is not there by accident,” the diplomat stressed.
Pashinian has also been criticized by his domestic political opponents for agreeing to start the process of border demarcation without securing the withdrawal of Azerbaijani forces from Armenian border areas seized by them last year.
The Armenian government said earlier this year that the process should start only after a mutual withdrawal of troops from contested border areas.
“I think there’s a recognition that you need a pullback on both sides of the border,” the EU diplomat said in this regard, adding that the demarcation commission is expected to also deal with “those contested areas where tension reduction is a priority.”
The diplomat also insisted that the EU’s growing involvement in Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations is not aimed at undermining Russia’s significant role and presence in the Karabakh conflict zone. The official pointed to the Kremlin’s positive reaction to the outcome of the Brussels talks.
The diplomat said Turkey, another major regional player, is even more supportive of the EU mediation: “This process that we’re running is very helpful for them because the Turks are not able or cannot have a process of normalization with Armenia without that being matched by a process, if you like, of normalization between Azerbaijan and Armenia. So there they are, in my view, mutually reinforcing.”
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