Meeting not revolutionary but positive: Armenia’s PM

Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan described today’s meeting with Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev as positive. He stated about it at the meeting with representatives of the Armenian community in Austria.

He said he cannot qualify it as a breakthrough or revolutionary but said a process has launched which gives an opportunity to speak about bilateral agendas and ideas.

“I assess the meeting as positive and hope that president Aliyev will assess so too. I also want to say that when I say positive it does not mean a victory for one and defeat for the other. I think till now this was the logic. The important part of this is that the issue is not to come out and state I won and the other side lost. A conversation has started and each party has his ideas,” Pashinyan stated.

“The conflict has deep roots and the important thing is to fix that we are not dealing with a simple issue. It is important to form a climate for telling each other our views, to speak to each other, to reach stable situation on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and line of contact. Can we just start conversation over the necessity for the people of rural bordering settlements start living normal life, deal with agriculture without thinking that snipers may kill them?” Pashinyan said.

Armenia’s PM voiced hope that Aliyev’s assessments will not differ from the ones voiced by him.