By Heghine Buniatian and Karelen Aslanian
YEREVAN (Azatutyun) — The European Union may succeed in organizing next month a potentially decisive meeting of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, a senior EU official said on November 10.
Aliyev and Pashinyan had been scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the EU’s October 5 summit in Granada, Spain. Pashinyan hoped that they will sign there a document laying out the main parameters of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
However, Aliyev withdrew from the talks at the last minute. He also appears to have canceled another meeting which EU Council President Charles Michel planned to host in Brussels later in October.
The EU official, who did not want to be identified, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that Michel and other EU representatives are now holding separate discussions with Yerevan and Baku in an effort to reschedule the trilateral meeting for December. Although no agreement has been reached so far, the summit may take place next month, said the official.
Pashinyan said, meanwhile, that he has not yet received “an invitation to the next meeting from Charles Michel.” Speaking during the annual Paris Peace Forum in the French capital, he said the peace accord can be signed “in the coming months” if Azerbaijan commits to mutual recognition of each other’s Soviet-era borders and a corresponding mechanism for delimiting the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
