Mirzoyan discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Council of Europe Secretary General Marija Pejcinovic Buric during her visit to Yerevan.
“I reaffirmed the Armenian government’s readiness to make efforts to establish peace and stability in the region,” he said after their meeting. “In this context, it is fundamental to address the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which should include the key provisions of ensuring the security and all rights of the Artsakh people and determining Nagorno-Karabakh’s status.”
Mirzoyan’s comments came the day after Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev warned Armenia against bringing up Karabakh’s status in peace talks with Azerbaijan. Aliyev again said that Azerbaijan’s victory in the 2020 war with Armenia put an end to the conflict and even Karabakh’s existence as a territorial unit.
“If Armenia continues to call into question Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity then Azerbaijan will have no choice but do the same [with regard to Armenia,]” he said.
Baku has been pushing for a peace treaty with Yerevan that would commit the two sides to recognizing each other’s territorial integrity. Armenian officials have said that Karabakh’s status and the security of its population should also be on the agenda of planned talks on the treaty.
Aliyev on Thursday also implicitly threatened to resort to military action if the Armenian side continues to oppose the opening of a land corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhichevan exclave.
The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, ruled out such an extraterritorial corridor on Friday when he spoke at a meeting in Yerevan with his counterparts from Russia and other ex-Soviet states making up the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization.
Grigorian stuck to the official Armenian line that Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Russia and the European Union call for only conventional transport links between the two South Caucasus states.