Armenian analyst rules out possibility of specific talks during Armenian PM’s visit to France

Armenian political analyst Hakob Badalyan has said that he doesn’t expect any specific or recently raised issues to be discussed during Nikol Pashinyan and Suren Papikyan's visit to France.

"Regarding expectations from Nikol Pashinyan and Suren Papikyan's visit to France, naturally there will be discussions. However, I don't think that there are any specific issues on the agenda that have not been discussed before or have appeared only now," Caliber.Az quotes Badalyan as saying in a conversation with Armenian media.

"In my opinion, there can be a separate conversation, for example, about the fact that Pashinyan spoke with the head of British intelligence in Munich. I think this will be very interesting for the French side, and it is not excluded that there will be a discussion about it,” he said.

In addition, there were other meetings in Munich: Pashinyan met with Aliyev and the OSCE Chairman-in-Office. And a separate topic was discussed there. Of course, it is possible that some similar issue was raised at the meeting with Pashinyan, although, judging by the reports in the footnote, this is not the case. The bilateral meeting with Scholz and the meeting of Suren Papikyan with the German Defence Minister could have been discussed with the French side.

As for the West's relations with Armenia, the Karabakh issue posed a challenge for the superpowers to advance their geopolitical strategy, including in terms of deepening relations with Armenia. After all, before that, the West would have faced much greater opposition from Azerbaijan and would have had to deepen relations with Armenia in the context of the Karabakh conflict. This means that the attitude towards Armenia and Azerbaijan would have to be differentiated. And we have seen the seriousness of this differentiation in the case of Russia as well.

Now we see that the EU is making statements about much closer relations with Armenia. But when Armenia says that it is ready to deepen its relations with the EU as much as the EU is ready, there is a rather interesting response that was expressed in Yerevan by the German Foreign Minister. She said that what is important for us now is the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan, after which we will consider the prospects of regional rapprochement. So, this is another evidence of the situation and logic I mentioned above," Badalyan said.