International mediators are trying to organize another meeting of Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s foreign ministers later this month, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday.
“The [U.S., Russian and French] co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have proposed a meeting of the foreign ministers in January,” the ministry spokeswoman, Anna Naghdalian, told the Armenpress news agency. “An announcement on the meeting will be made in a coordinated manner.”
Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov held three face-to-face meetings in the second half of 2018.
According to the co-chairs, at their most recent talks held in Milan on December 5 Mnatsakanian and Mammadyarov pledged to “work intensively to promote a peaceful resolution of the conflict and to further reduce tensions.”
“They agreed to meet again in early 2019 under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs for this purpose and in order to facilitate high-level talks,” the mediating troika said in a December 6 statement.
Both ministers described the Milan meeting as “useful.” Mammadyarov said that it resulted in a rare “mutual understanding” between the two parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The ministers met in the Italian city the day before Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke to each other at a summit of ex-Soviet states held in Russia.
Pashinian and Aliyev 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 two hours later that a Karabakh settlement “remains a top priority” for Armenia.
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