By Shogik Galstian and Heghine Buniatian
NEW YORK (Azatutyun) — US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a trilateral meeting with Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov during a session of the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, September 26. According to virtually identical Armenian and Azerbaijani readouts of the talks, the ministers agreed to “put additional efforts towards the conclusion” of the peace treaty.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry has not yet clarified whether the two sides narrowed their differences.
Hovik Aghazaryan, a senior member of the Armenian parliament representing the ruling Civil Contract party, told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that they at least made no progress towards signing the kind of an agreement which Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan again advocated in a speech at the UN General Assembly delivered just a few hours after the New York talks.
Pashinyan said that Yerevan and Baku should “take what has already been agreed,” sign an interim peace treaty and try to settle their remaining differences later. The Azerbaijani government has repeatedly rejected the idea.
It is not clear whether the United States backs the Armenian proposal. US officials have made no public statements in support of it. In its readout of the New York talks, the US State Department said Blinken “encouraged continued progress by both countries to finalize an agreement as soon as possible.”
