On Thursday, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan intends to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Prague on the margins of the European Political Community summit, and hold four-party talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
This will be the first meeting between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia since the escalation of tensions and large-scale fighting on the border between the two countries in mid-September this year. The last time the leaders of the two countries had talks on August 31 in Brussels, with the participation of European Council President Charles Michel.
Pashinyan has never met with Erdogan before. The last time the leaders of Armenia and Turkey met was in 2009, when then presidents Serzh Sargsyan and Abdullah Gul met in the Turkish city of Bursa during a soccer match between the national teams.
Four-party meeting
The current meeting with Aliyev will also be held with the participation of mediators in the person of Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron. The talks will take place amid persistent reports of new shootings on the border, as well as mutual accusations of violations of humanitarian law in connection with the images of the mistreatment of prisoners and the bodies of dead soldiers circulated in recent days in Azerbaijani and Armenian social media segments, which has also increased tensions.
Pashinyan told the Armenian parliament on Wednesday that despite the situation, his cabinet is committed to establishing peace in the region. He added that he "sees a road map by which peace between Yerevan and Baku is possible." Pashinyan stressed the importance of recognizing the territorial integrity of the two countries in accordance with the CIS Treaty of 1991, as well as establishing a direct dialogue between the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan with the help of the international community.
The Azerbaijani leadership has recently repeatedly stressed the need to accelerate the process of working out the text of a peace treaty with Armenia and has expressed its readiness to sign such a document. On Wednesday, Aliyev said that Baku wants to end hostility and hatred and open a new page of peace. The head of state stressed "certain optimism" about the peace process with Yerevan in light of the October 2 meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan "with the agenda of preparing a draft peace treaty."
"We hope it won't take long," Aliyev said. He also made it clear that Armenia's attempts to drag out the process would be another serious mistake on its part.
He also said he wants the process of delimitation of the border with Armenia to start as soon as possible and to work actively in this direction on the basis of historical documents and maps, as well as international experience. Baku is in favor of resolving all issues related to the delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border within the framework of a bilateral commission on delimitation. According to many political analysts, the Azerbaijani side will not agree to the deployment of international observers on the border between the two countries, an idea promoted by Yerevan.
Meeting with Erdogan
The talks with the leader of Turkey can be called historic - the two countries do not have diplomatic relations and are in a political and diplomatic confrontation, in particular because of Turkey's unwillingness to recognize the fact of the genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.
The Turkish newspaper Sabah reported Tuesday, quoting its sources, that Erdogan will meet with Pashinyan in Prague on October 6 on the sidelines of the European Political Community summit. During the talks, Sabah noted, it is planned to discuss the normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. In particular, Erdogan is expected to offer Pashinyan to hold meetings of special envoys on the settlement of bilateral relations alternately in Turkey and Armenia, rather than in third countries. In addition, the Turkish leader will make proposals to reduce tensions in the region and sign a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan as soon as possible.
GSV "Russia - Islamic world"
Photo: official website of the Prime Minister of Armenia
Based on materials from TASS