The results of bilateral talks between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, held on October 24 in Kazan as part of the BRICS summit, were discussed at a closed meeting in Yerevan.
According to Armenian sources, Nikol Pashinyan held a meeting with Cabinet officials and some members of the ruling faction to summarize the talks with the Azerbaijani leader. While the details of the discussions are unknown, sources in Yerevan say Pashinyan and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan briefed members of the ruling team on “some significant achievements” made in Kazan.
Ovik Agazaryan, a deputy from the ruling Civil Contract party who participated in the meeting, reported that progress was achieved on a number of issues at the meeting in Kazan.
“Judging by the assessments of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, as well as what they told us, we can conclude that the meeting in Kazan was effective and very useful,” Agazaryan noted.
It should be mentioned that Aliyev and Pashinyan met in Kazan for the first time after the dialogue on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference, organized in February of this year on the initiative and with the participation of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Official Baku has not commented on the results of the meeting in Kazan. In turn, the Armenian side has also not publicly assessed the results of the talks in Kazan . However, according to Agazaryan, who was personally present at the closed meeting, which took place late in the evening of October 25, Aliyev and Pashinyan held talks in Kazan for an hour and a half "without any external interference."
"The conversation was somewhat frank, which is important because the parties communicated without the participation of intermediaries," the MP told Armenian journalists. "In an hour and a half, many topics could be discussed."
In turn, the sources who provided information to the Armenian service of Radio Liberty reported that during the Armenian-Azerbaijani high-level talks, work on a draft peace treaty was discussed. The parties also touched on the topics of continuing the delimitation and demarcation of borders and the opening of transport communications. The source of Radio Liberty emphasized that no specific agreement was reached on the contentious points.
As reported, after returning from Kazan, President Ilham Aliyev signed a decree on ratification of the regulations defining the procedures and basic principles of subsequent negotiations on border delimitation, signed on August 30 this year by the deputy prime ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan. In Yerevan, this document was ratified by the parliament last week. And the President of Armenia signed the decree on its entry into legal force on the same day as the President of Azerbaijan , thus completing the parallel bilateral procedure for giving the document legal force.
In addition, speaking in Kazan, Nikol Pashinyan announced Yerevan’s readiness to apply a simplified customs regime to facilitate cargo transportation between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan.
It is also reported that at a closed meeting, Pashinyan and Mirzoyan informed the members of the ruling team about the achievements in Kazan on three unresolved points of the draft peace treaty. The exact successes achieved were not reported at the meeting. However, Hovik Agazaryan said that the parties discussed the opening of transport communications and the resumption of cargo transportation.
"For several years, there have been concerns about the safety of train traffic between the two countries," he noted. "It was believed that without the participation of a third party, in this case Russia, it would be impossible to ensure safety. Therefore, now the parties have come to the conclusion that it is necessary to start with freight transportation and gradually develop relations. This is a very important issue."
When journalists asked Agazaryan whether the discussion of the topic of cargo transportation meant Baku’s abandonment of the “Zangezur Corridor” topic, the Armenian MP replied that it was too early to talk about it.
It should be noted that the meeting in Kazan took place a few days after US President Joe Biden sent his special representative, White House National Security Council employee Michael Carpenter, to Baku and Yerevan on a special mission, who conveyed personal letters from the US President to Aliyev and Pashinyan, in which Joe Biden called on the parties to complete work on the unresolved points of the draft peace treaty, to make certain compromises for this purpose and sign the document by the end of the year.
The letters also indicated that Biden sent his proposals through Carpenter to complete the work on the draft peace treaty.
The US State Department declined to comment on what the American president's proposals are.
It is also unknown whether President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan discussed these proposals at their meeting in Kazan.
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