The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan held their latest meeting in Brussels on May 14.
The president of the European Council, who mediated the discussions, released a statement afterwards asserting that the parties involved had made significant progress towards a peace agreement.
But the parties, Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev gave no indication that a final accord was at hand.
Pashinyan, Aliyev, and President of the European Council Charles Michel met for the fifth time. Since the Second Karabakh War in 2020.
Azerbaijan regained large swathes of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian forces.
“Together, we reviewed all issues on our agenda,” Michel said in his statement. “Following the recent positive talks in the United States on the peace treaty, the momentum should be maintained to take decisive steps towards the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Michel said that the sides agreed to resume bilateral talks on the demarcation of the mutual state border with a shared “unequivocal commitment to the 1991 Almaty Declaration and the respective territorial integrity of Armenia (29,800 km2) and Azerbaijan (86,600 km2).”
ARMENIA AZERBAIJAN BORDERS
The specific mention of the two countries’ areas means that Armenia accepts Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan doesn’t claim any territory in the Republic of Armenia.
Azerbaijan has made numerous incursions into Armenian territory since the 2020 war, justifying its moves by the lack of a demarcated border. The Armenian website Civilnet estimates that Azerbaijani troops currently hold at least 215 square kilometres of land belonging to the Republic of Armenia.
Michel also reported progress on the issue of connectivity between Azerbaijan and its Nakhchivan exclave through southern Armenia.
“Positions on this topic have now come very close to each other, particularly on the reopening of the railway connections to and via Nakhchivan.
Their respective teams have been tasked to finalize an in-principle agreement on the modalities for opening the railway connections and the necessary construction works together with a concrete timetable. They also agreed to draw upon the support of the World Customs Organization in supporting this work,” the statement read.
Azerbaijan earlier pushed for a seamless corridor to Nakhchivan without any Armenian border or customs checks. But has lately seemed to back down from this demand.
“The invitation to the World Customs Organization to support the discussions should mitigate concerns that this route will become a ‘corridor’ while still keeping preferential arrangements for Baku and its exclave – maybe similar to Kaliningrad?,” tweeted Olesya Vartanyan, a senior South Caucasus analyst at the International Crisis Group.
NAGORNO- KARABAKH
Michel again spoke of “the need for a transparent and constructive dialogue between Baku and the population” of Armenian-controlled Nagorno Karabakh, emphasizing “developing a positive agenda with the aim of guaranteeing the rights and security of this population. In close cooperation with the international community.”
Dialogue between Baku and representatives of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh seemed to have launched in earnest two months ago.
Still, it faltered amid Azerbaijan’s continuing blockade of the region and regular flare-ups of violence.
Michel announced that the next meeting between the three in Brussels will be in July.
And that Aliyev and Pashinyan will also meet with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany on the margins of the 2nd European Political Community Summit in Chisinau.
“Will it resolve all the past concerns in Yerevan and Stepanakert toward Brussels? Certainly not.
There are and will be many who will question different parts of this statement and why certain issues did not get into the text,” Vartanyan tweeted.
“What’s important is that after more than eight months, Brussels is finally back to hosting such a meeting. It will not resolve all the problems overnight, but should hopefully prevent the emergence of new issues.”