YEREVAN — During regular government session on Thursday, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan summed up the results of the trilateral meeting between him, the President of the European Council and the President of Azerbaijan, which took place on April 6 in Brussels.
PM Nikol Pashinyan confirmed that he and Aliyev agreed to instruct their foreign ministers to prepare for official negotiations on a peace treaty. He reiterated that Baku’s proposals on the treaty, including mutual recognition of each other’s territorial integrity, are acceptable to Yerevan but must be complemented with other “issues of the peace agenda,” including Karabakh’s future status and “security guarantees for the people of Karabakh.”
“Guarantees of the security of the people of Artsakh, protection of their rights and freedoms, as well as the clarification of the final status of Nagorno Karabakh are included in Armenia’s answers to Azerbaijan’s proposals and should be the subject of negotiations,” Pashinyan said.
Pashinian also said the OSCE Minsk Group co-headed by the United States, Russia and France should continue to mediate Armenian-Azerbaijani talks. “We need to continue working in that direction,” he said.
“Naturally, there was a discussion about the deterioration of the security environment in Nagorno Karabakh, particularly the events in Parukh, but those discussions did not lead to a joint assessment of the situation. I must also say that I did not consider the further discussion of this particular topic appropriate in the Brussels platform, because it is about the intrusion of Azerbaijani units into the area of responsibility of the Russian peacekeeping mission in Nagorno Karabakh. Therefore, the issue should rather be discussed with the participation of the partners from the Russian Federation, and we are going to do that,” PM Pashinyan said.
“We expect that the peacekeepers of the Russian Federation in Nagorno Karabakh will take measures to ensure the withdrawal of Azerbaijani units from their area of responsibility,” he added.
“Humanitarian issues were one of the important topics of the discussion. The President of the European Council stressed the need to release all those held captive. We also discussed the possibility of cooperating to find out the fate of missing persons. Let me remind you that after the two Artsakh wars, we have 985 missing persons, 208 from the 44-day war, 777 people from the first Artsakh war. We must continue to work to find out their fate.
“If I give a general assessment of the Brussels meeting, I must state that an agreement was reached to move forward in both directions. The further assessment, of course, depends on the results to be achieved during the practical implementation of the agreements. We will consistently continue to advance our agenda of opening an era of peaceful development for our country and the region, and we must do our utmost to make this agenda a reality. I repeat, unfortunately, it does not depend only on us, but we must do our part consistently”. PM Pashinyan concluded.
