President Ilham Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan will meet in Brussels on Tuesday and Wednesday. At first, meetings will be held in a trilateral format with EU President Charles Michel. Before that Michel will hold meetings on a bilateral basis. On Wednesday, following the Eastern Partnership summit, there will be a bilateral, witness-free meeting between Aliyev and Pashinyan,” political analyst Fikret Mammadov told Turan.

It will be for the first time since the war that the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders will hold tête-à-tête talks.

Mammadov believes that interest in the Brussels meeting has also increased due to the certain inconclusiveness of the Sochi meeting. The intergovernmental commission failed to reach a decision on December 1, although it was announced by Russian President Putin. After this meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov phoned only to his Armenian colleague and “emphasised” the implementation of the decisions taken.

After that President Ilham Aliyev warned Armenia that tensions between the two countries would not subside until the Armenian authorities comply with the commitments signed.

“The meetings in Brussels are the next stage in forcing peace on Armenia, already at the European level. After the Brussels talks, Pashinyan can say that Europe has also ‘given the go-ahead’ to open communications and begin the process of defining the border, thereby neutralising both pro-Russian and pro-Western opposition. This is a new chance for Pashinyan to avoid another losses which are inevitable if he stubbornly refuses to compromise this time too,” Mammadov said.

Armenian political analyst Benjamin Poghosyan considers the sides’ agreement to meet in Brussels as normal diplomatic practice. He is not sure that any document will be signed between Yerevan and Baku in the Belgian capital. “At best, a joint statement may be adopted with general formulations about ‘readiness for negotiations’, ‘commitment of the sides’ and so on,” Poghosyan believes.

“We should not expect the Brussels meeting to form any new platform, alongside the troika of co-chairs and the Armenia-Russia-Azerbaijan format. This is likely to be a one-off initiative. One way or another, the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan would have gone to the Eastern Partnership summit. All things considered, it was decided to organise a meeting of the heads of the two opposing states in parallel. This is a widely spread international practice,” Poghosyan said.

Source: Turan News Agency