“The leaders have agreed to convene again on 14 May 2023 in a Brussels trilateral meeting,” read a statement released by Michel’s office. “Their discussions will also be flanked by a meeting together with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, in the margins of the upcoming European Political Community summit in [Moldova’s capital] Chisinau on 1 June 2023.”
“The leaders have also agreed to continue to meet trilaterally in Brussels as frequently as necessary to address ongoing developments on the ground and standing agenda items of the Brussels meetings,” added the statement.
It said nothing about the precise agenda of the upcoming summit which will follow marathon talks held by the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers outside Washington last week. The U.S.-mediated talks focused on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
The U.S. State Department insisted on Monday that the two ministers “made significant progress in addressing difficult issues.”
“And we believe that with additional goodwill and flexibility and compromise an agreement is within reach,” a department spokesman said, echoing U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statements.
The secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, told reporters on Tuesday that the conflicting sides still disagree on key terms of the would-be treaty. He said those relate to Azerbaijani recognition of Armenia’s existing borders, an internationally supervised dialogue between Baku and Karabakh’s leadership as well as “international guarantees” for the sides’ compliance with their peace accord.
Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Paruyr Hovannisian announced, meanwhile, that the Brussels summit will be followed by Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks in Moscow. He did not specify whether they will involve Aliyev and Pashinian or their foreign ministers.
Russia has been very critical of the U.S. and EU peace efforts, saying that the Western powers are trying to use the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to drive Moscow out of the South Caucasus. It maintains that Armenian-Azerbaijani agreements brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin are the only viable blueprint for settling the conflict.