“Agreement on cornerstone points has not yet been reached,” Arman Yeghoyan told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, commenting on Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s latest meeting with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev hosted by European Council President Charles Michel on August 31.
“But it was agreed that that the foreign ministers [of the two states] will meet in November, which means that there is still room for further work and it is possible to bring the positions somewhat closer during these two months ,” he said.
Michel said after the Brussels summit that the ministers will “meet within one month to work on draft texts” of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty sought by Baku. The Armenian government likewise said the meeting should be held in September.
In Yeghoyan’s words, the main stumbling block is Yerevan’s insistence on addressing the status of Karabakh and the security of its population in the would-be treaty.
“They [the Azerbaijanis] do not want to talk about that at all,” explained the lawmaker heading the Armenian parliament committee on European integration.
Aliyev said last Friday that the planned talks on the peace accord will be based on five elements which the Azerbaijani side presented to Yerevan in March this year. Those include a mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity, something which Baku believes would uphold its sovereignty over Karabakh.
Aliyev expressed hope that an agreement along these lines will be signed in the coming months.
Commenting on such a possibility, Yeghoyan said: “I won’t exclude that if our points are taken into account, if some tangible and steady progress is made on guarantees for protecting the rights of the Karabakh Armenians.”
Responding to Aliyev at the weekend, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan accused Baku of misrepresenting the results of the Brussels talks and seeking to “torpedo the peace process.”