In a short statement released on Friday, Grigorian’s office said he held “working meetings” at the CIA offices in Langley, Virginia. It gave no details
CIA Director William Burns paid a surprise visit to Armenia in July. He held separate talks with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Grigorian. The latter discussed with Burns Armenia’s ongoing negotiations with Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Grigorian was received at the CIA headquarters two days after meeting a senior aide to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Washington for talks hosted by U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.
Sullivan said they “identified concrete steps forward in support of a stable and lasting peace.” He did not reveal those steps.
In what appeared to be a related development, official Yerevan announced on Friday that Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will meet with his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov in Geneva on Sunday.
Mirzoyan and Bayramov held a trilateral meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in New York as recently as on September 19. Blinken urged them to meet again before the end of September.
The New York talks came just days after heavy fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border left at least 280 soldiers from both sides dead. Azerbaijani troops reportedly attacked and seized some of the Armenian army positions there.
U.S. State Department Spokesman Ned Price insisted on Monday that Azerbaijan should “return troops to their initial positions.” Price also said that Washington will “continue to engage and encourage the work needed to reach a lasting peace.”
Russia indicated on Thursday its strong disapproval of the U.S. mediation, with Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova again accusing the West of trying to hijack the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiating process and use it in the deepening geopolitical standoff with Moscow.
“We see that there are a number of non-regional players who would like to appropriate the laurels of a peaceful settlement or the implementation of [Russian-brokered Armenian-Azerbaijani] peace agreements,” charged Zakharova.
“We are not greedy,” she told reporters. “We are always ready to share success. But now we are seeing another trend, when they are trying to derail the implementation of these agreements. This is already serious.”