Russia and the EU also renewed their calls for the quick signing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty finalized in March.
“We encourage both sides to proceed with the signing and ratification of the draft peace agreement as soon as possible,” Anitta Hipper, the EU foreign policy spokeswoman, told the Armenpress news agency on Friday. “The EU stands ready to provide additional support and expertise, should the sides request it.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made similar comments during the Aliyev-Pashinian meeting that lasted for about five hours.
“We, of course, welcome the fact of such a direct dialogue, and have repeatedly said at various levels that we would welcome the signing of a peace agreement as soon as possible,” Peskov told journalists.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed hope earlier this week that an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal will be reached “pretty soon.” The U.S. State Department spokeswoman, Tammy Bruce, would not say on Thursday whether Rubio’s optimism was connected with the upcoming Abu Dhabi talks.
“I think the Trump Administration and Secretary Rubio’s approach speaks for itself, and his remarks at the cabinet meeting is that this is an administration working for peace,” Bruce told a news briefing in Washington. “They will do what and go wherever they need to go. It has not waned. It is because it is the core of the commitment to making America great again is improving, of course, the condition of the world around us.”
In their virtually identical readouts of the Abu Dhabi summit, Baku and Yerevan did not say whether the two sides moved closer to signing the peace treaty. The Azerbaijani side has for months made that conditional on a change of Armenia’s constitution.
In separate comments to RFE/RL’s Armenian Service, the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Ani Badalian, described the summit as “successful” and said it “can serve as a serious basis for the further implementation of the peace process.” But she did not elaborate.
According to Azerbaijani state media, Aliyev and Pashinian discussed, among other things, the possibility of “initialing” the draft peace treaty. Badalian seemed to imply that they reached no concrete understandings to that effect.