This past summer, I declared that Armenia is ready for negotiations in the format of the OSCE Minsk Group at the high level and at the highest level; as you know, the foreign ministers have already held meetings in this format, and Armenia looks forward to seeing the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group organize such a meeting. This is what Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan stated during today’s press conference.

According to him, the meeting of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Brussels is not new because President of the European Council Charles Michel had presented the idea of the meeting in the summer when he said the Eastern Partnership Summit will be held in December and proposed to organize a meeting of the leaders.

“I accepted the idea and said we will focus more on it in December. The presses have already reported that Michel had phone calls with me and the Azerbaijani president, and we confirmed and expressed the willingness to meet. Based on our perception, the representatives of Armenia and Azerbaijan need to have more frequent contacts so that the situation can be solved and the crises can be avoided,” he said.

Asked what he expects from the meeting in Brussels, Pashinyan said the following: “The important subtlety is that, nevertheless, Armenia will try not to mix the agendas. I believe one of the issues to be discussed in Brussels will be the humanitarian issues, including the issue of captives. I don’t believe it’s right to have an expectation from a specific meeting. The problem is that there is tension, and we need to negotiate in order to ease the tension. This week, on Nov. 26, there will also be meeting in Sochi. There were talks about the meeting earlier. There need to be positive responses to news about such meetings. In particular, during these phone talks with the EU President, another initiative was presented, that is, the direct communication between the defense ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan in order to try to prevent incidents,” Pashinyan said.