Pashinyan wants to meet with Ilham Aliyev

Baku/13.08.21/Turan: At a government meeting on August 12, the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said that he was ready to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and hold talks on Karabakh. He said that he was waiting for concrete proposals from the OSCE Minsk Group.  “Armenia announced a reform of the armed forces not for aggression, but for protection from aggression,” Pashinyan said. "Yerevan is ready to resume the work of the trilateral commission of the vice-premiers of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan to unblock regional communications."

Chair of the REAL party Ilgar Mammadov shared his vision of the situation around Karabakh in the "Difficult issue" program.

According to Mammadov, the diplomatic process does not take place under the lenses of video and cameras. Therefore, we do not have enough information to make any assumptions. “The fact is that diplomatic practice presupposes that such information is communicated in advance through diplomatic channels to the addressee in order to find out his reaction. If this was done and the reaction was not negative, then it can be assumed that a meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is possible.

If there were no proposals for negotiations through the diplomatic channel, this means that Pashinyan's statement was made for domestic consumption - PR, or in order to influence the geopolitical situation. Therefore, it is difficult to judge the possibility of such a meeting,” he said.

According to Mammadov, it would be nice if the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry made a statement, which said whether there were initial consultations with representatives of the Armenian Foreign Ministry or not?

“If yes, then what issues were raised in these consultations? Then it would be clear what Pashinyan is seeking - substantive negotiations or PR, or is it an attempt to alleviate the geopolitical, geo-economic, military situation in which Armenia finds itself with the help of rhetoric, i.e. just demagoguery. If it turns out that Pashinyan is sincere and really strives for substantive negotiations, then the first topic could be their conduct without anyone's mediation."

Another important issue, according to Mammadov, is the topic of the negotiations. “As we can see, Pashinyan mentioned the OSCE Minsk Group in his statement. Obviously, he is going to talk about the status of Karabakh. However, the Azerbaijani side believes that this issue has been settled and is unlikely to agree to discuss it,” he is sure. —0—