According to the French Foreign Ministry, in telephone conversations with Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, Le Drian highlighted the importance of stability and peace in the South Caucasus and stressed the readiness of Paris for consultations with the countries of the region.
Armenia’s Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it had applied to the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs (France, the United States and Russia) to organize Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations on a peace treaty “on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Helsinki Final Act.”
It followed a statement by Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Bayramov that Baku had submitted a five-point proposal to Yerevan to normalize relations.
In his conversations with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, Le Drian also reportedly expressed concern about the recent tensions on the ground and called for all possible measures to be taken to reduce them.
The top French diplomat, in particular, stressed the importance of contacts between the sides on the issue of restoring gas supply to Nagorno-Karabakh, which was disrupted earlier this month due to a damaged pipeline passing via Baku-controlled territory.
Nagorno-Karabakh’s ethnic Armenian authorities on Saturday said that gas supply to the region had been partially restored after the completion of maintenance work on the gas pipeline.
Earlier, Stepanakert accused Baku of not allowing Armenian maintenance workers to enter the territory controlled by Azerbaijan for repairs, as a result of which the region was deprived of gas supply for 11 days amid freezing temperatures.
During his telephone conversation with Mirzoyan, the French foreign minister also welcomed the recent visit of the Armenian foreign minister to Turkey, stressing that France “encourages continued negotiations on the normalization of relations between the two countries.”
The situation in Ukraine was also reportedly discussed during both conversations.