U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had originally been scheduled to host the two ministers on November 20. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov withdrew from the trilateral meeting in protest against what his office called pro-Armenian statements made by James O’Brien, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Europe and Eurasia.
O’Brien visited Baku in early December in a bid to convince the Azerbaijani leadership to reschedule it. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s top foreign policy aide, Hikmet Hajiyev, said afterwards that Washington must reconsider its “one-sided approach” to the conflict before it can mediate more peace talks.
The U.S. State Department kept trying to organize the talks that would focus on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Its special envoy for the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace process, Louis Bono, visited Yerevan for that purpose last week. Lilit Makunts, Armenia’s ambassador to the United States, confirmed that no new date was set for the talks as a result.
“There is no clarity, no agreement at the moment,” Makunts told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service.
Significantly, Bono did not proceed to Baku from Yerevan. According to some Azerbaijani media outlets, Azerbaijani officials refused to meet with him. The U.S. embassies in both South Caucasus nations did not deny the snub.
Bayramov offered late last month to meet with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border without third-party mediation. Hajiyev said afterwards that Baku and Yerevan do not need third-party mediation in order to negotiate the peace treaty.
Armenian analysts have suggested that Baku does not want Western mediation anymore because it is reluctant to sign the kind of agreement that would preclude Azerbaijani territorial claims to Armenia.