White House NSA Jake Sullivan Calls on Baku and Yerevan to “Continue Making Progress Toward Peace, Avoid Provocations”

WASHINGTON, DC — Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov held a trilateral meeting on Wednesday, with Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, at the White House. Sullivan said he urged Baku and Yerevan to “continue making progress toward peace, as well as to avoid provocations and de-escalate tensions in order to build confidence.”

According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry the latest regional developments were discussed. Mirzoyan told Sullivan that Azerbaijani artillery and drone attacks that left the four Karabakh soldiers dead are part of continuing Azerbaijani efforts to “subject Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing.”

It said in the context of achieving lasting peace and stability in the South Caucasus Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan highlighted the importance of ensuring maximum certainty on the issue of delimitation based on the map of 1975 and the Alma-Ata declaration, as well as the withdrawal of the troops. The issues of unblocking regional infrastructures were also touched upon, emphasizing the absence of an alternative to following the principles of sovereignty, jurisdiction, equality and reciprocity.

Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan once again stressed the importance of properly addressing the issues of rights and security of the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Touching upon the most recent aggressive action of Azerbaijan, which today resulted in four casualties of the Defense Army of Nagorno-Karabakh, Minister Mirzoyan stressed that such incidents were aimed at disturbing the efforts in the negotiating process and emphasized the imperative to exclude the use of force or threat of use of force.

Minister Mirzoyan highlighted that Azerbaijan carried out this action in parallel with the humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh resulting from the illegal blockade of the Lachin corridor, deliberate disruption of gas and electricity supply to Nagorno-Karabakh, aimed at subjecting Nagorno-Karabakh to ethnic cleansing.