Armenia’s parliament announced on Wednesday that two of its members will visit Baku next month to attend a meeting of lawmakers from the European Union and ex-Soviet republics involved in the EU’s Eastern Partnership program.
One of those deputies, Armen Ashotian, heads the Armenian parliament’s foreign relations committee and is also a deputy chairman of President Serzh Sarkisian’s Republican Party. The other lawmaker, Mane Tandilian, is affiliated with the opposition Yelk alliance.
“Logistical issues relating to the delegation’s participation in the conference are being worked out,” the National Assembly’s press office said in a statement.
The Baku meeting slated for September 22 will be organized by a standing committee of the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly, an Eastern Partnership body. It will focus on gender equality and women’s health, according to the statement.
Mutual visits by Armenian and Azerbaijani officials and other citizens of the two warring nations are extremely rare because of the unresolved conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. They usually take place within the framework of multilateral events.
Azerbaijan has minimized such contacts since the early 2000s. It considers the presence of Armenian officials and public figures on Azerbaijani soil to be an affront to the country’s territorial integrity.
Interior Minister Ramil Usubov is the most high-ranking Azerbaijani government official to have visited Armenia in the past decade. He took part in a 2011 meeting in Yerevan of Council of Interior Ministers of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Facebook Forum