FM: Armenia has no mandate to negotiate on Karabakh's status

Armenia does not claim to negotiate on Karabakh's status because it has no mandate to do so.

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan made the remark during a discussion on the implementation of the 2022 budget, Caliber.Az reports quoting Armenian media.

"We have not received a mandate from the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to negotiate its future. Thus, we do not claim or try to do so in the issue of status determination," Mirzoyan said.

Yerevan, in the process of the Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement, is only discussing a mechanism of dialogue between Karabakh Armenians and official Baku, without which it cannot be full and lasting, the minister added.

Earlier, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said he recognised Azerbaijan's territorial integrity of 86,600 square km, which includes both Nagorno-Karabakh and enclaves of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Timeline

May 1- 4: Mirzoyan and Bayramov held four-day peace talks facilitated by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Washington.  These talks, which represent the longest round of negotiations since the end of the Second Karabakh War in 2020, marked the third such ministerial meeting between Armenia and Azerbaijan as mediated by the United States since September 2022.

May 14: A trilateral meeting took place between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, EU Council President Charles Michel and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Brussels. This was the first time the two leaders met in person since talks in Munich in February and after the two countries' foreign ministers' extensive discussions in Washington in early May.

After the Brussels talks, Charles Michel stressed that both sides recognised each other’s territorial integrity on the basis of the 1991 Alma-Ata Declaration. Moreover, Michel’s statement also explicitly specifies the square kilometre area of both countries. This means Armenia has officially recognised the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast as part of Azerbaijan. On May 22, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan reconfirmed in Yerevan that his country recognises Azerbaijan within a territory of 86,600 square kilometres, including Karabakh and some enclaves.

May 19: Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenia counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan met in Moscow. After the meeting of the two ministers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to agreeing an end to a blockade of transport links but more work is needed to seal a peace deal between the two countries.

May 25: Russia brokers the next meeting between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Moscow on May 25. Pashinyan said he had agreed to peace talks in Moscow on May 25 with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russian President Vladimir Putin mediating.

June 1: The five-party informal meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Armenian President Nikol Pashinyan, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and EU Council President Charles Michel, was held on the margins of the European Political Community (EPC) Summit in Chisinau. “We had the opportunity to discuss all the issues that were previously raised at the meeting in Brussels in May. We managed to discuss the delimitation of the border and the preparation of a peace agreement. This was an excellent preparation for the scheduled meeting in Brussels on July 21,” Charles Michel said after the meeting.