U.S., Russian and French mediators met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian in Yerevan on Wednesday at the start of a fresh tour of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone which follows a series of high-level Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations.
A statement by Pashinian’s press office said they “outlined further steps” in the negotiation process and discussed ways of creating an “appropriate atmosphere” for that. “They stressed the importance of implementing understandings on maintaining the ceasefire regime,” it said.
According to the statement, Pashinian also briefed the three diplomats co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group on his meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held in Davos, Switzerland January 22. It was their third face-to-face encounter since September.
The Davos meeting came a week after the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers met in Paris in the presence of the Minsk Group co-chairs. According to the mediators, the ministers acknowledged the need for “taking concrete measures to prepare the populations for peace.”
Those developments fuelled Armenian media and opposition speculation about far-reaching agreements reached by Pashinian and Aliyev. Some critics claimed that Pashinian may have agreed to make significant territorial concessions to Azerbaijan.
The prime minister brushed aside these “conspiracy theories” on January 23. He stated a week later that Armenia and Karabakh will not agree to such concessions to Azerbaijan in return for mere peace in the region. Baku criticized that statement, saying that it could undermine the peace process.
On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cautioned against excessive expectations of decisive progress towards a Karabakh settlement. “Given that the new government of Armenia was formed only recently, additional time is needed to understand just how intensively and far it is possible to advance the settlement process at this stage,” he told a news conference in Moscow.
“The co-chairs and the OSCE can only help to create conditions for dialogue,” said Lavrov. “Decisions will have to be made in direct negotiations between the parties.”
Lavrov met with his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanian on February 16 on the sidelines of an international security forum in Munich, Germany.
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