Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will receive his colleagues from Armenia and Azerbaijan Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov in Moscow on Friday, the ministers will hold trilateral talks on the normalization of relations between Baku and Yerevan. In addition, there will be a separate Armenian-Azerbaijani meeting on the prospects for a peace treaty.
Reports of shelling on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan have become more frequent in recent days. The sides accuse each other of violating the ceasefire regime and claim deaths as a result of the hostilities. This escalation underscores the need to intensify the dialogue and make progress towards a settlement as soon as possible. On the eve of the consultations, Russia once again called on its partners to refrain from provocations and escalation.
Attention was also drawn to the upcoming talks when Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan announced that he would meet with Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev in Moscow on May 25, mediated by Russian President Vladimir Putin. The ministers are likely to prepare for a summit, which has a good chance of leading to new landmark solutions to the Armenian-Azerbaijani crisis. At least, that is how all the previous trilateral contacts at the highest level ended.
According to the official representative of the Russian foreign ministry Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministers will discuss in detail the implementation of the agreements of the Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders, "including the unblocking of transport and economic ties, the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border, the preparation of a peace treaty between the countries, as well as contacts between the public, experts and parliamentarians." She informed that Lavrov also plans to hold separate meetings with his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts, during which he is expected to "exchange views on the most topical issues of the bilateral and international agenda."
"We expect that the upcoming contacts will promote Baku and Yerevan in the settlement of controversial issues, the search for mutually acceptable solutions and in general increase confidence between the parties, as well as strengthen and stability in the South Caucasus," the diplomat concluded.
On the situation in the region
Less than a week ago, on May 14, Pashinyan and Aliyev met in Brussels, together with President of the European Council Charles Michel. Both sides positively assessed the results of those talks, the main of which was the mutual recognition of the territorial integrity of the two states within the internationally recognized borders.
According to the Armenian prime minister, Yerevan recognizes the sovereignty of Azerbaijan over 86.6 thousand square kilometers, which includes Nagorno-Karabakh, but insists that the settlement of Karabakh must occur through dialogue. Thus, Pashinyan pointed to the need to resolve the situation around the Lachin corridor, which remains blocked.
Baku stressed the "exceptional importance" of the results achieved at the summit. "We declare that normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia on the basis of mutual recognition and respect for each other's sovereignty, territorial integrity and international borders is the only way to ensure lasting peace and stability in the region," the Azerbaijani foreign ministry said in a comment. In addition, according to Charles Michel, Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to resume dialogue on border delimitation.
Nevertheless, with this positive background, which promises further successes in achieving peace between Baku and Yerevan, the recent military incidents so far have been discordant. It remains to be hoped that in Moscow the parties will first succeed in extinguishing the potential for conflict and enforcing the non-alternative trilateral agreements that underlie the settlement. Progress in preparing a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan depends on it.
Western reaction
Moscow continues to stress that it only welcomes the positive contribution of third parties to normalizing relations between Yerevan and Baku. However, the West's actions raise doubts about the authenticity of its good intentions in this direction. The Russian side estimates that the US and the EU are seeking to insert themselves into the situation in the South Caucasus with self-serving goals and a desire to discredit Russia's role.
In particular, Lavrov said after talks with the Armenian foreign minister in March that Western states were engaged in "diplomatic raiding, when they tried to take over the trilateral agreements between Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, trying to impose their supervision over all this work, directly undermining the key principles of these documents." According to him, the best response to such a line is an honest conversation about the situation in the region and existing difficulties, as well as work on concrete steps to solve problems, which are still quite numerous on the way to the settlement. There is no doubt that this is the approach that the ministers will try to take at the forthcoming meeting.
Resolving the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict
Baku and Yerevan have been disputing Nagorno-Karabakh's ownership since February 1988, when the latter announced it was seceding from the Azerbaijani SSR. The situation in the region escalated on September 27, 2020, with active fighting.
Putin, Aliyev and Pashinyan signed a joint statement on the complete cessation of hostilities in Karabakh on November 9, 2020. According to the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the occupied positions, several districts passed under Baku's control, and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the line of contact and in the Lachin corridor. Subsequently, the leaders of the three countries adopted several more joint statements on the situation in the region. Last year, Azerbaijan and Armenia began discussing a peace treaty.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: Russian Foreign Ministry
Based on materials from TASS