Mirzoyan and Bayramov to Meet on October 2: Pashinyan Discusses Artsakh Issue

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia, Ararat Mirzoyan, and the President of Azerbaijan, Jeyhun Bayramov, will meet soon. This was announced by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan during a broadcast on Public Television. He noted that the meeting is scheduled for October 2, during which substantive discussions on the text of the peace treaty are expected to commence.

“To this point, there has not been a text put on the table that we need to sign or not sign. There has been a substantive text regarding the opening of communications, but we prepared that text, and we are ready to sign it; unfortunately, Azerbaijan is not ready to sign that prepared text. We continue to work to find texts that are acceptable to us and could be acceptable to the other side,” Pashinyan stated.

Addressing the content of the peace treaty, Pashinyan highlighted, “The basis of the peace treaty should be mutual recognition of the territorial integrity of Armenia and Azerbaijan. If Azerbaijan recognizes our territorial integrity, based on the agreement of December 18, 1991, on the establishment of the CIS, we are ready to proceed with mutual recognition of territorial integrity on that basis.”

According to Pashinyan, the primary stakeholder in the discussion concerning the Artsakh issue should be the people of Nagorno-Karabakh, through their elected representatives. “Our understanding is that the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh may not be addressed in the peace treaty. There is this nuance: we believe that yes, Armenia and Azerbaijan should recognize each other's territorial integrity, whereas the stakeholder in the Nagorno-Karabakh issue should be the people of Nagorno-Karabakh through their elected representatives,” he added.