Does Armenia Restore Relations with Hungary?

The current authorities are keen to restore diplomatic relations with Hungary, which were suspended on August 31, 2012, after Azerbaijani officer Ramil Safarov, convicted of murdering Armenian soldier Gurgen Margaryan in Budapest, was extradited to Azerbaijan and immediately pardoned by Ilham Aliyev.

The newspaper "Pats" reports that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was approached for clarification, but it responded that the requested information could not be provided according to point 2 of the annex to the instruction No. 1002-N by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia dated June 16, 2017, which confirms the extended list of information subject to confidentiality within the RA MFA system.

Recently, new details related to this issue have come to light. According to sources of the media outlet, in addition to the meetings that took place in Prague and were covered, there was another meeting that did not receive any official communication or discussion.

According to a source from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had a brief separate meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in Prague (notably, even the Minister of Foreign Affairs did not attend the meeting). We have learned that Pashinyan and Orbán reached a preliminary agreement to restore diplomatic relations between Armenia and Hungary in the coming months.

More details can be found in today’s edition of the newspaper.