On Thursday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken confirmed that “tangible progress” had been made in the negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington, noting that an agreement to end tensions was “at hand”.
But the talks that took place between the Armenian Foreign Minister, Ararat Mirzoyan, and the Azerbaijani, Jeyhun Bayramov, and hosted by Washington for four days, did not lead to any agreement that would end the decades-old conflict between the two former Soviet republics.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars, the first in the early 1990s and the second in 2020, with the aim of controlling the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inhabited by an Armenian majority and unilaterally separated from Azerbaijan three decades ago.
And Thursday, Blinken said, at the end of the talks, that “the two sides have discussed very difficult issues in the past few days, and have made tangible progress towards a sustainable peace agreement.”
“I hope they will see, and I think they, like me, will see that there is an agreement on the horizon and within reach,” he added.
He continued, “Reaching that agreement will not only be, in my opinion, historic, but will be deeply in the interests of the peoples of Azerbaijan and Armenia.”
The Armenian and Azerbaijani ministers did not make any public comment after the meeting, from which no official statement was issued.
But Blinken praised Mirzoyan and Bayramov, urging her to keep pushing things forward.
The US Secretary of State acknowledged the difficulty of the matter, but stressed the seriousness of “commitment and determination to move forward in addressing the remaining thorny issues.”
Tensions were renewed when Baku announced on April 23 that it had set up the first checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, the only land link between Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which was subject to a siege for several months, which caused a shortage of goods and electricity. A step that Armenia considered a violation of the recent ceasefire between the two sides.
The talks between the two sides took place in a conference center on behalf of former Secretary of State George Shultz in the suburbs of Washington.
He did not announce the content of the talks or the specific goals sought from them in terms of resolving the differences between the two countries.
Before the talks, a US official said they were aimed only at normalizing relations, not reaching a peace agreement.
“Our goal is to ensure that the two ministers can sit together and talk,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Blinken acknowledged that major challenges remain, pledging that the United States would continue to support the negotiations.
“The last mile of a marathon is always the hardest. We know that,” Blinken said, noting that the United States “will continue to help our two friends cross the finish line.”
Russia said on Tuesday that there was “no alternative” to its mediation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, “At this stage, there are no other legal rules that can contribute to settling (the conflict). There is no alternative to these tripartite documents,” referring to the agreement signed between Moscow and the two conflicting parties in 2020.
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2023-05-04 21:58:36
