Azeri FM Encouraged By Karabakh Talks

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has voiced satisfaction with his most recent meeting with his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanian, saying that it resulted in a rare “mutual understanding” between the two sides.

Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanian met in Milan on December 5 in the presence of the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group. They described the talks as “useful.”

“I think that at the last meeting with my Armenian counterpart we achieved some mutual understanding for the first time in a long time,” Mammadyarov said late on Tuesday at a yearend reception hosted for Baku-based ambassadors of foreign states.

The chief Azerbaijani diplomat did not go into details of the talks. According to Russian and Azerbaijani news agencies, he stressed only that he will again meet with Mnatsakanian next month in an effort to achieve “tangible results” in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

Commenting on understandings reported by Mammadyarov, the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Anna Naghdalian, pointed on Wednesday to the fresh talks planned by the two ministers. She also said that they signed a joint statement with the Minsk Group co-chairs issued after the Milan meeting.

“We had long failed to adopt statements in such a format,” added Naghdalian.

In that statement, the mediators expressed hope that “an intensive results-oriented high-level dialogue between the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia” will resume “in the near future.” The statement also said that Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanian “reaffirmed their commitment to work intensively to promote a peaceful resolution of the conflict.”

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke to each other on December 6 at a summit of ex-Soviet states held in Russia. They also had a brief conversation during the previous CIS summit held in Tajikistan in September. There has been a significant decrease in ceasefire violations in the Karabakh conflict zone since then.

“The year 2019 will give a new impetus to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement process,” Aliyev wrote on his Twitter page on December 14.

Pashinian tweeted about two hours later that a Karabakh settlement “remains a top priority” for Armenia.