In late August, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan Elmar Mamedyarov announced that he had received an offer from the OSCE Minsk Group French co-chairman Bernar Fasse to meet with the Foreign Affairs Minister of Armenia Vartan Oskanyan in Paris on September 12-13 or September 14-15 in London. Mamedyarov also said that he had accepted the offer.
However, on September 2, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Vartan Oskanyan announced on public television that he wasn’t sure that the meeting would take place on the mentioned date because there are some events taking place at the UN. Deputy head of the Ministry’s press/information department Vladimir Karapetyan had this to say about that:
“This is the ministry’s decision: if we’re going to negotiate the Karabakh conflict, then our issue is to come to terms, present a principle package deal and make an agreement about that. If there are other processes taking place at the same time and other departments are getting involved, then that makes things more complicated. That’s why the Armenian side still can’t decide to negotiate or not in September.” But Karapetyan also says that the obstacle may be “overcome soon and Armenia will be able to participate.”
It’s worth mentioning that on September 4, Azeri authorities sent a new document to the UN regarding Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity and issues concerning the seized territories. According to the first clause of that document, Azerbaijan calls on the UN to make the country untouchable once again, presents Karabakh as Azerbaijan’s territory in the third clause and talks about fires breaking out in Karabakh. With that, Azerbaijan is calling on the international community to take measures and prevent similar events from taking place in the future. Judging from Karapetyan’s announcement, can we really say that Armenia won’t take part in the negotiations until Azerbaijan takes back the document?
“We won’t take part until we overcome that obstacle.”
But what obstacle is he talking about? According to him, the obstacle is the discussion of topics not concerning the Karabakh conflict. During the last UN session, it was agreed that there would be no discussion concerning the status of Karabakh due to the fact that there still hadn’t been any decision on that. It’s worth mentioning that after the presentation of this document, Armenian representative of the UN Armen Martirosyan announced that if Azerbaijan continues the discussions and puts that up for voting, then Armenia has the right not to participate in the negotiations. However, the foreign affairs ministry of Armenia responded less harshly. In response to the question as to whether Armenia would participate at all, Minister Vartan Oskanyan said that there is still no such decision.