Political analyst Suren Sargsyan, speaking about Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s visit to the US, noted that it was not planned for the Prime Minister to meet with any high-ranking American officials. “The Minister of Foreign Affairs was the only one to meet with the Deputy Secretary of State. The Armenian delegation did not have any other high-level meetings. Many were saying that a meeting with the US President Donald Trump was possible, but it’s natural that such a meeting did not take place at this stage. First, it was due to strict schedules- particularly Trump’s- but also because there weren’t any extremely important issues on the agenda that needed to be discussed.”
Regarding the Prime Minister’s speech at the UN, Suren Sargsyan said, “This was his second speech at the UN and his statements could have had a wider meaning in general, at least in the sense that this was the second time the Prime Minister spoke about the revolution, its consequences and reasons, and internal political processes from the UN podium. I do not believe that the international community is interested in the internal political processes taking place in Armenia. I think it would have been more effective for the Prime Minister to speak about Armenia’s challenges with foreign policy and issues with security, as well as the changes that the Armenian government has implemented or plans to implement.”
Answering the question of why it was reasonable for a Trump-Pashinyan meeting to not take place in this stage, Suren Sargsyan said, “The foreign minister noted- and I would like to quote him- that if there is something important to say and the need to speak with the President, he will call the Secretary of State, and the Prime Minister will call President Trump. They will obviously answer our phone calls. The most important thing to note here is that it will happen when we have something critical to say. What did we have to say to American leadership? There were 190 world leaders at the UN with their countries’ delegations. Trump had a record number of meetings. He met with the leaders of countries whom it was absolutely necessary to meet with. And of course, Armenia was not on that list. And it’s natural that Trump distributed his schedule in that way.”
Sona Kababyan
