Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has reaffirmed his readiness to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
“The President of Azerbaijan has announced that he is ready to meet with me. Back in July I had declared that we are ready to meet at both high and highest level, which means on the level of Foreign Ministers and leaders of countries. In a recent speech at the UN General Assembly, I stated that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue is awaiting resolution. On several occasions I have welcomed the statements of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, in which they stress the need to solve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict and resume the peace process towards this end,” the Prime Minister said at a meeting with representatives of the Armenian community of Lithuania.
In this context, the Prime Minister noted that as before, he declares that he is ready to meet with the President of Azerbaijan. Pashinyan added he is ready to take the maps of all minefields that do not divide the Armenian and Azerbaijani Armed forces, i.e. are only of humanitarian significance and do not solve military and security issues, because the fields are deep in the rear of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces.
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“I am ready to take all the maps we have with me and I call on the President of Azerbaijan to bring all our prisoners with him. You see, the President of Azerbaijan complains that the quality of the maps we transferred before is not good. We gave the maps that we have, that is, we do not keep the maps of better quality maps in the drawer. I do not rule out and I knows that there is a problem with the quality of the maps. Why? Because the quality of the map depends on the professional qualities of the cartographer. And we are sincere here, we are open, and we do not intend to deceive anyone, because here we are talking not only about Azerbaijan, but also our mediating partners, which are our friendly countries. This will not be honorable to do something in a different way in this situation,” Pashinyan stated.
“We have given the maps that we have, we simply do not have other maps of the area. This is a fact, and this must be recorded as a reality. As for trust, it is clear that in this situation Azerbaijan does not trust us, we do not trust Azerbaijan, the whole problem is to try to move forward in small steps so that at least some trust is built,” he said.
The Prime Minister noted that the trust is important for solving humanitarian issues, including the return of Armenian captives.