According to virtually identical Armenian and Azerbaijani readouts of the conversation, the two men discussed the implementation of their August 8 agreements reached in Washington and, in particular, Armenia’s pledge to open a U.S.-administered transit corridor to Azerbaijan’s Nakhichevan exclave.
“They reaffirmed their willingness to continue working towards further strengthening peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” read the statement released by Pashinian’s press office.
Yerevan and Baku have offered different interpretations of the transit arrangement that will be named the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). In a speech at a session the UN General Assembly in New York last week, Aliyev again said that the TRIPP amounts to the extraterritorial “Zangezur Corridor” that has been sought by him ever since the 2020 war in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian objected to the term when he addressed the assembly two days later. He said it runs counter to the Washington agreements brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump and is “perceived as a territorial claim” in Armenia.
Azerbaijani as well as Turkish officials ignored Pashinian’s objections in the following days. Armenian opposition leaders, said, meanwhile, that Pashinian’s complaints make mockery of his claims about the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and Armenian control of the TRIPP.
Pashinian has since continued to insist that “peace has been established between Armenia and Azerbaijan.” His Civil Contract party pushed through the Armenian parliament on Thursday a resolution touting the Washington agreements and voicing support for their implementation. The resolution adopted during a session of the National Assembly boycotted by opposition lawmakers, also calls on politicians and pundits in Armenia and Azerbaijan to “refrain from rhetoric and actions that symbolize conflict and/or are aimed at reformulating or inflaming it.”
The two opposition groups represented in the parliament denounced it as another attempt by Pashinian to mislead Armenians. One of them, the Hayastan alliance, said it “has nothing to do with the real peace that our country needs so much.” Hayastan also pointed out that the resolution does not call on Azerbaijan to withdraw from Armenian border areas occupied by it, release Armenian prisoners or enable Karabakh’s displaced population to return home.
For its part, the opposition Pativ Unem bloc accused Pashinian of feeding the public with a “new dose of misinformation and empty promises.”
The Washington summit also resulted in the initialing of an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty. Baku continues to make its signing conditional on a change of the Armenian constitution.
Pashinian’s political opponents maintain that the treaty will not preclude a future Azerbaijani military against Armenian even if it is signed. They say that his appeasement policy only encourages Aliyev to demand more concessions from Yerevan.
