ArmInfo. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan does not consider the Vienna meeting with Ilham Aliyev as negotiations, since this, at least at this stage, does not proceed from the interests of Armenia, the Head of the Analytical Center on Globalization and Regional Cooperation Stepan Grigoryan expressed a similar opinion to ArmInfo.
On Friday, March 29, in Vienna, with the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, a meeting was held between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. On March 28, in the capital of Austria, a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan and Elmar Mammadyarov was held. The ministerial meeting was preceded by their separate meetings with the mediators.
"Pashinyan characterizes the process in Vienna as a meeting, and Aliyev as negotiations, thereby wanting to demonstrate to all the non-existing resumption of the idle negotiation process. Thus, defining the current events as a meeting, the Armenian Prime Minister simply calls things by their proper names, since Aliyev's definition is a little incorrect, "he stressed.
According to Grigoryan, Pashinyan's such rhetoric is quite understandable, given that it is based on the intention to restore Artsakh participation in the process. Thus, the prime minister makes it clear that he can participate in negotiations exclusively on behalf of Armenia only after the Artsakh people appear at the negotiating table. In this light, the political analyst assesses Pashinyan's similar response to Aliyev's statement on preserving the existing negotiation format as the only correct one.
According to the political scientist, Yerevan should once again confirm the firmness of its own position on the need to return Stepanakert to the negotiating table. Grigoryan is convinced of the correctness of this line of Pashinyan, considering the sequence of Armenia in this matter to be extremely important, despite all the obstacles along the way.
"In any case, the preservation of the current situation around the negotiations is impossible. We all saw what all this led to exactly 3 years ago (Azerbaijan's initiation of the four-day escalation - Ed. note). Accordingly, the negotiation process certainly needs updating. And Artsakh`s return to the process is certainly yhe best option, "Grigoryan concluded.
At the meeting with the Armenian community of Austria, assessing the meeting with Aliyev positively, Nikol Pashinyan, however, noted the absence of any breakthroughs. "It is important that a process has begun that gives an opportunity to talk about the ideas, problems and agenda that I talked about in Stepanakert. Now the main thing is to think about whether the parties can make an effort to keep the situation stable on the Line of Contact, to ensure that the villages lived normally, were engaged in agricultural work without fear of shelling. I hope that the assessments of Ilham Aliyev on these issues will not differ much from ours, "the prime minister concluded.