Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to put additional efforts towards concluding a peace agreement and establishing interstate relations in the shortest possible time, informs Armenia’s Foreign Ministry.
This agreement was reached following a trilateral meeting between the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov, held under the initiative and with the participation of U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in New York on the sidelines of the 79th session of the UN General Assembly on Thursday, September 26, 2024.
“Secretary Blinken commended both ministers on the progress Armenia and Azerbaijan have made toward a durable and dignified peace and encouraged continued progress by both countries to finalize an agreement as soon as possible. The Secretary underscored that a peace agreement would bring increased stability and prosperity to the region,” said Matthew Miller, the U.S. State Department Spokesman, in a readout.
The Armenian and Azerbaijani sides expressed their gratitude to U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken for organizing the trilateral meeting. To note, both the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministries issued identical press releases following the meeting.
As the trilateral meeting was taking place in New York, Azerbaijan accused Armenia of opening fire on their positions in Nakhichevan. The Armenian Defense Ministry immediately issued a statement denying the allegations and setting the record straight.
The Armenian Defense Ministry’s statement runs as follows: “The statement issued by the Defense Ministry of Azerbaijan, alleging that on September 26, at approximately 4:10 p.m., units of Armenia’s Armed Forces opened fire towards Azerbaijani positions in the southwestern section of the border, does not correspond to reality.”
To note, the Office of the Prime Minister of Armenia has proposed the establishment of a joint Armenia-Azerbaijan mechanism for investigating ceasefire violations and/or related cases, to which Azerbaijan has not yet responded.
The official statements did not clarify whether Mirzoyan and Bayramov made more progress towards the peace treaty. Their latest meeting came more than a week after Blinken’s separate phone calls with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
According to Pashinyan, Baku and Yerevan fully agree on the preamble and 13 of the 16 articles of the draft treaty. He has repeatedly suggested in recent weeks that the two sides sign a deal that will contain these provisions and leave out their remaining differences.
“The Armenian side has proposed to sign already agreed articles of the peace treaty before the COP29 in Baku [scheduled for November],” said Pashinyan at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
Aliyev again rejected the proposal earlier this week. Baku also makes the signing of a peace deal conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution, which it says contains territorial claims to Azerbaijan.
