'We Have Never Been This Close:' Top Azeri, U.S. Officials On Karabakh Talks, Russia and Türkiye

The top Biden administration official in charge of Europe and Eurasia on Tuesday laid out Washington’s efforts to help Azerbaijan and Armenia to independently finalize a peace agreement among themselves, which he warned that Russia was “trying to make sure that happens on its terms,” TURAN’s Washington correspondent reports.

“I think both of those two countries [Armenia and Azerbaijan) are a bit frustrated by the involvement [of Russia], to be honest. And we are working very hard so that the expressed desire of peace can be manifested in agreement,” Assistant Secretary of State James O’Brien told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

O’Brien was responding to a question posed by Senator Ben Cardin, the Foreign Relations Committee chair, who recently returned from a trip to Armenia, saying that the country was facing “a real security threat to their borders by being taken by force by Azerbaijan, with the complicity of Russia.”

“Much of the population of Armenia wants to get further from Russia. So we’re creating the conditions for that to happen,” O’Brien said in response.

According to him, a significant deadline will come later this week, when several thousands of Russian FSB troops have been requested to leave. “And those are really significant for a number of reasons, in part because they manned the border at the International Airport, and that’s where some of the sanctions smuggling evasion takes place. So we’ll see whether Russia is really willing to honor the sovereign wishes of Armenia that it leaves so that Armenia can build the relationships that it wants,” he said.

As for Armenia-Azerbaijan, O’Brien went on to add that the peace in the region will also open up a route that goes through both countries, which will also allow the Central Asian countries to gain access to global markets and much less dependence on Russia and China. “So this is all a part again of allowing countries to choose their own paths to the global markets,” he added.

When it comes to the border issues between Baku and Yerevan, the assistant secretary said that there is an agreement under negotiation that defers the demarcation to another channel in the peace process.

O’Brien’s comments came on the same day that one of Azerbaijan’s top diplomats showed up in Washington pointing at Yerevan for progress on settling the conflict.

Speaking at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank, Elchin Amirbayov, the special envoy of the President of Azerbaijan, said that the peace process has been a great success with “significant achievements,” particularly since last December when both sides had decided to move forward “in the purely bilateral direction.”

“We have made substantial progress towards finalizing the peace deal. We have never been as close to this as ever before” he said.  “I think there is a historic opportunity right now for both countries to finally close this chapter of animosity, and to engage in changing the nature of the region — of South Caucasus, and to make it a place of good neighborhoods and stability and peace.”

Moving forward, Baku expects Armenian leadership to deliver on its position that it has no claims over Nagorno-Karabakh.  “Now, if we look at the text of the peace agreement that is on the table, we’re very close to finalizing it, and it’s Azerbaijan’s intention to do its best in order to meet the expectations of the whole international community, but also to once and for all resolve this issue which is at the core of this rivalry and conflict with Armenia, that is the claims of Armenian territorial claims to Azerbaijan.”  Amirbayov said.

“So we hope that the remaining difficulties will be addressed properly in the short period of time, and that we can attain a credible and durable and irregular peace,” he added.

Armenia was not represented at the Hudson Institution event, where Amirbayov was also asked about Turkish-Armenian rapprochement as both countries met this week to resume talks to normalize ties.

“I think our Turkish friends also realize that improvement of relations between Armenia and Turkey is very much linked to the progress which could be achieved between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” he said in response.

“… Unless we sign a peace agreement, unless we are finalizing this peace deal, and we eliminate all the possible challenges to sustainability of this peace, it would be premature for me to speak about the expediency of putting a cart in front of the horse, as they say,” Amirbayov added.

He went on to conclude: “I think that we are on the same page with our Turkish friends, because they also realize that this issue of territorial claims in this region of South Caucasus needs to be treated immediately, and any steps which might complicate the already very fragile atmosphere around the peace process should be avoided.”