YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — A US special envoy for Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations again visited Armenia and Azerbaijan for further discussions on a planned peace agreement between the two nations.
The diplomat, Louis Bono, met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Armen Grigoryan, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, on Friday, May 26.
Pashinyan’s office said he presented “the Armenian side’s approaches to resolving the key outstanding issues.” It did not elaborate.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry reported, for its part, that Mirzoyan and Bono reviewed the Armenia-Azerbaijan “normalization process” and the remaining differences between the parties. It cited Mirzoyan as stressing the importance of non-use of force, “border security” and an “internationally guaranteed mechanism for dialogue” between Baku and Nagorno-Karabakh’s leadership.
Bono had met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in Baku on May 24. According to an Azerbaijani readout of the meeting, they discussed the draft peace deal and the results of recent Armenian-Azerbaijani talks organized by the United States and the European Union.
“As we’ve said, we believe that an agreement is in reach, and we continue to press the two parties to work together to reach an agreement on the issues that remain outstanding,” the US State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, told reporters on Thursday.
