Armenia’s National Security chief Armen Grigoryan said his meeting this week with Hikmet Hakiyev, the Azerbaijani presidential advisor, was “effective.”
Grigoryan met with Hajiyev on Tuesday in Washington. The talks were hosted by White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
“We discussed the agenda of the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, as well as topics on the establishment of peace in the region. These topics relate to the unblocking, the delimitation and the border security, as well as other issues which bring peace and stability in the region. These are the main topics that we have discussed,” Grigoryan told Voice of America.
“The elimination of consequences of the latest large-scale aggression was also emphasized. You know that in this respect the United States has repeatedly announced that Azerbaijan must return its forces to their initial positions from where the aggression started,” Grigoryan emphasized.
Armenia’s national security chief told VoA that there are five items on the agenda of talks between Yerevan and Baku, one of which fall under the humanitarian context that includes the return of Armenian prisoners of war and other captives.
The other three, he said, deal with the opening of transport routs, the delimitation and demarcation of the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.
“There is also the peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. We have tried to make clarifications in these directions on how we are going to move forward. These are interconnected. In other words, the concreteness was around these topics, how we move forward,” Grigoryan said.
While in Washington, Grigoryan met with U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Laura Cooper, with whom he discussed Azerbaijan’s attack on Armenia’s territory that began on September 13.
The two reportedly also discussed the development of U.S.-Armenia relations.