Presdient of the European Council Charles Michel On October 7 had a phone conversation with Ilham Aliyev on the upcoming meeting between the heads of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Brussels. Charles Michel wrote about this on X.
“I expressed the EU’s commitment to Armenia-Azerbaijan normalisation process. I reiterated the need for mutual respect of territorial integrity and sovereignty, and for advancing on border delimitation. I stressed also the need to ensure Karabakh Armenians’ security and rights, also over the long term,” wrote Charles Michel In turn, Ilham Aliyev, as reported by the Azerbaijani media, said that “there are 8 more Azerbaijani villages under Armenian occupation that need to be liberated.”
To note, a meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders was supposed to take place on October 5 in Granada, however Ilham Aliyev publicly rejected to attend it the day before. Aliyev explained his decision by the participation in the negotiations of the French President, who, according to the Azerbaijani leader, takes an openly Armenian position. The Turkish President was also denied participation in the negotiations, which Aliyev also considered unacceptable. As a result, a quadrilateral meeting took place with the participation of the heads of the European Council, France, Germany and Armenia.
To recall, on September 19, Azerbaijan launched a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh, which it kept under blockade for 9 months. After the army attack, residents of Artsakh began to leave their homes in a hurry. In less than a week, almost the entire population of Nagorno-Karabakh - about 100 thousand people - fled to Armenia.
Meanewhile the Azerbaijani president visited Georgia on 8 October, where at a press conference with Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Gharibashvili, he stated that he was ready to meet with the Prime Minister of Armenia in Tbilisi.
“We need Georgia to be involved in this situation, and I thank Mr. Prime Minister [of Georgia] for his willingness to help us in this matter and for offering us his role as a mediator. This is a country that is ready, and we expect the same from Armenia. If Armenia gives its consent, we will immediately start bilateral and trilateral meetings here in Georgia, through the relevant departments,” Georgian First Channel quotes Aliyev as saying.
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