Why Mammadyarov Mentioned 'Peacekeepers'

The newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak reports: "It has seemingly become a long-standing habit of Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov to conduct a carefully controlled, largely questionable information leak before and after almost every meeting organized at the level of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group. Following yet another meeting in Washington, Mammadyarov claimed that the co-chairs suggested discussing the issues of 'troop withdrawal' and 'deployment of peacekeepers.' However, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied this statement, indicating that substantive issues regarding the settlement of the conflict were not discussed in Washington."

This pattern has been particularly noticeable in recent months. Shortly after the first official summit organized between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on March 29, it became known that negotiations were also going to occur at the level of the two countries' foreign ministers. Although the Armenian Foreign Ministry did not deny the news, it refrained from providing more specific details, stating that the meeting would take place in the capital of one of the three co-chairing countries of the Minsk Group. Taking advantage of his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanyan's foreign trip, Mammadyarov announced that the meeting would take place in Moscow. The information was accurate; the meeting was indeed held in Moscow on April 15, initiated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. However, the question is that according to accepted diplomatic practice, such meetings are typically announced in a coordinated manner rather than unilaterally. But this was certainly the least of the evils in Mammadyarov's public activities."

"After the Moscow meeting, Mammadyarov, who had expressed satisfaction with the existence of the so-called 'Lavrov Plan' months before the April War in 2016, stated that Mr. Lavrov had made proposals regarding the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, again conducting unilateral information leaks, telling Azerbaijani journalists that proposals made by Russia in 2016 were discussed in Moscow. Official Yerevan denied this statement from the head of Azerbaijan's MFA. The spokesperson for Armenia's MFA, Anna Naghdalyan, stated that Mammadyarov effectively violated the agreements reached in Moscow by making statements that diverged from the agreed formulations and contradicted them, adding that 'they are fictitious and do not correspond to reality.'"

"Then the master of informational manipulation, Mammadyarov, announced that he and his Armenian counterpart had now been invited to a meeting in Washington from the United States, where U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would personally work to achieve a 'breakthrough' in the Karabakh conflict. We will address the circumstances of Secretary Pompeo's 'personal efforts' below. In any case, let us note that the spokesperson for the Armenian MFA again did not deny the possibility of a Mnatsakanyan-Mammadyarov meeting in the U.S. capital and reiterated a call for the Azerbaijani side not to violate the norms of diplomatic ethics. But the most intriguing developments awaited after the Washington negotiations. Following the meetings in Washington, Azerbaijan's foreign minister reportedly stated that the co-chairs of the Minsk Group had made proposals for the parties to discuss. Specifically, they suggested 'troop withdrawal' and 'deployment of peacekeepers.' According to Mammadyarov, these are old and new proposals that they have been discussing for the past 15 years."