Azerbaijani Prime Minister at the Tbilisi Silk Road Forum with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Georgian Prime Minister in the background © Official Photo
Despite hopes that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev would meet in Brussels towards the end of the month, the European Union’s Special Representative for the South Caucasus, Toivo Klaar, yesterday said that it will now not take place. Giving the reason as “time constraints,” he made the announcement while participating remotely in a conference held in Yerevan.
Following the slightly unorthodox disclosure, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan was more specific at a joint press conference with his Canadian counterpart, Mélanie Joly. “I hope that the problem really is the specific dates and in the near future it will be possible to agree on new dates,” he said, naming Aliyev.
However, it comes after the Azerbaijani president had already pulled out of another EU-facilitated meeting in Granada earlier this month. “Baku does not see the need to discuss the problems of the region with countries far from the region,” an official source told media at the time. “Baku believes that these issues can be discussed and resolved in a regional framework.”
This was the same message that Aliyev conveyed during his visit to Georgia four days later, where it was announced that Tbilisi could also host bilateral and trilateral meetings between the sides. Many suspected this as a sign of increasing frustration with negotiations facilitated by European Council President Charles Michel.
Baku is already irked by a statement adopted in Granada despite Aliyev’s absence. It charges that some provisions in the declaration signed by Pashinyan, Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were its own internal matter and should not have been discussed.
[…]
The full article can be read here.
