The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhum Bayramov, are scheduled to meet in Almaty, Kazakhstan. The date of the meeting has not been announced.
“As we reported, there is an arrangement between the ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan to meet at the suggestion of Kazakhstan. It is specified that the meeting will take place in Almaty,” Armenia’s foreign ministry spokesperson Ani Badalyan said Monday.
President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan last week announced about Kazakhstan’s proposal to host talks and voiced his government’s support for the talks. Late last week, Armenia’s foreign ministry also signaled that it was open to such a meeting.
The talks were proposed by Kazakhstan’s president, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, who during his visit to Armenia on April 15 and following his meeting with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, announced that his country is ready to “provide a platform for negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.”
Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry emphasized on Monday that talks will be held exclusively between Mirzoyan and Bayramov, saying that Astana is simply hosting the meeting.
“We are planning such negotiations in Almaty. We are now in contact with our colleagues in Azerbaijan and Armenia. The upcoming negotiations will be held exclusively between the parties. We are not talking about the mediation of Astana, we are only providing goodwill services,” Aybek Smadiyarov, a spokesperson for Kazakhstan’s foreign ministry told the Russian Tass news agency.
Samadiyarov said that his country’s president, during his recent visits to Azerbaijan and Armenia, had mentioned the importance of establishing a strong and long-term peace between the countries.