Brussels, 14 May 2023. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, European Council President Charles Michel and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan

On Sunday, 14 May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev met in Brussels for renewed talks hosted by European Council President Charles Michel. Still many unresolved points but some small progress appears. Read more in my recent piece for Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa. 

On Sunday, 14 May, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev met in Brussels for renewed talks hosted by European Council President Charles Michel. It was the fifth such meeting organised by Michel and it marked a resumption of the Brussels Process. Last year, the talks to normalise relations between the two countries appeared to stall in early December, when Armenia advocated for the inclusion of French President Emmanuel Macron. Azerbaijan rejected the request and the talks did not take place..

 

The meeting also followed reported progress in talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, hosted by U.S. Secretary State Antony Blinken in Arlington, Virginia, on 1-4 May. Both sets of talks come amid what appears to be a new wave of efforts to resolve the long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway Karabakh region. Around 2.5 years after the 2020 44-day war that left over 6,000 dead on both sides and a totally new security situation on the ground, the meetings were timely..

 

With both sides highlighting that differences on key issues remained during the U.S. talks, expectations from the Brussels meeting were low, but in a statement released afterwards, Michel described them as ‘result-oriented’ and there appeared to be progress in key areas. The leaders agreed to embark on further efforts to delimit the volatile Armenia-Azerbaijan border. Just days before the Brussels event, skirmishes had already left dead and wounded.

 

Michel highlighted that the territory of Armenia comprised 29,800 and Azerbaijan 86,600 square kilometres. Though Pashinyan had used the first figure to highlight Armenia’s territorial integrity in his own speeches, this marked the first time that Azerbaijan’s was spelled out too, albeit only publicly by Michel. His comments, however, would have been agreed by both sides with most interpreting this as further recognition by Pashinyan, again recognising Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.

 

[…] 

 

Despite the optimism, however, some potential issues remain, with Moscow irked by the EU’s involvement in the Armenia-Azerbaijan process that would essentially override the 2020 Russian-backed trilateral ceasefire statement. Some observers believe that both the U.S. and the EU see normalisation as a way to ease Moscow out of Karabakh and possibly the region, a view Michel possibly sought to address. “The EU has no hidden agenda”, he said, also adding that another meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders could take place at the ECP summit in Spain in October.

 

Others, however, remain skeptical, and Moscow is unlikely to take mention of the World Customs Union governing the modalities of the Azerbaijan-Nakhchivan rail link well. In the 2020 ceasefire statement, Russia expected to exert control over both it and the Lachin Corridor. Developments over the coming days and weeks will therefore be critical in unpacking the significance of last weekend’s meeting and hopes for a breakthrough in resolving the Karabakh conflict. They will also impact hopes for Armenia-Turkey normalisation.

The full article can be read here.