Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian might meet U.S. President Donald Trump in September on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the Armenian Foreign Ministry confirmed on Tuesday.
“Yes, there is an intention to organize a Trump-Pashinian meeting,” said the ministry spokesman, Tigran Balayan. “Discussions regarding that are now underway. We can already confirm that Pashinian will participate in the opening week of the UN General Assembly in September and hold a number of bilateral meetings.”
“We are already working on those bilateral meetings, which might include a meeting between the U.S. president and the Armenian prime minister. At the moment I can’t tell you that a final agreement to that effect has been reached,” Balayan told a news conference.
Richard Mills, the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, said last week that Washington is exploring the possibility of organizing such a meeting. “I know both sides would like to see a meeting happen, but as you can imagine, the schedules of both the president and the prime minister are very tight,” he said. “So we will have to see if we can find a way to make that happen.”
Trump and Pashinian greeted each other and chatted briefly during a NATO summit held in Brussels in early July.
Later in July several pro-Armenian members of the U.S. House of Representatives started collecting the signatures of fellow lawmakers on their joint letter to Trump urging him to hold talks with Pashinian in New York. The talks would “strengthen dialogue between our countries,” they wrote.
Pashinian expressed readiness to “strengthen and expand” Armenia’s relationship with the U.S. when he congratulated Trump on America’s Independence Day on July 4.
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