BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 6. President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev is expected to meet with President of the Council of the European Union Charles Michel and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Brussels, Trend reports.
Besides, a one-on-one meeting between President Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan also can be conducted, and on April 5, an opposition rally was held in the Armenian capital Yerevan.
Azerbaijani MP Jeyhun Mammadov commenting on the issue called the opposition's rally another “show” organized by Pashinyan’s government on the eve of the Brussels meeting.
“A natural question arises: why haven’t these rallies been held until today? Why was this rally held the day before the Brussels meeting? Whom do the Armenian authorities want to deceive? Undoubtedly, the main goal of this "show" is to use public opinion as a pretext and insure themselves against possible scenarios during negotiations,” Mammadov noted.
“The Armenian leadership widely used such methods to halt the negotiation process in order to gain time. This once again indicates that the main goal of Armenia is to disrupt the negotiation process and refuse to sign a peace treaty [with Azerbaijan], and such approach has already become the state policy of Armenia,” the MP pointed out.
“However, both Pashinyan and his Western patrons are well aware that sooner or later work on the peace treaty, delimitation of borders [with Azerbaijan], the opening of communications and the solution of other issues must begin,” he further said. “The sooner this happens, the better it will be for Armenia. Azerbaijan will never back down from its legitimate position.”
According to the MP, Pashinyan, just like during other meetings with President Ilham Aliyev, suffered a crushing defeat during a meeting in Brussels on December 14, 2021.
Therefore, Pashinyan should not have high hopes for today's meeting: he should know that attempts to resist will result in another defeat. The sooner Armenia understands this, the better it will be for it, Mammadov stressed.
"Armenia must draw serious conclusions from the events of the 2020 second Karabakh war," he added.
Political expert Jeyhun Ahmadli said that the opposition rally in Yerevan on April 5 has raised a number of questions.
"The organization of such a mass action at the present time indicates the intention of the revanchist circles to dissuade Pashinyan from signing a possible peace treaty with Azerbaijan,” Ahmadli noted. “The conditions proposed by Azerbaijan are already known to the Armenian public. The key point for the revanchists is that if the peace process begins, they become political corpses.”
“It’s also possible that Pashinyan himself, before visiting Brussels, will try to demonstrate the "impossibility" of a compromise by organizing such a mass action to insure himself against possible scenarios during the negotiations, based on public opinion," the expert further said.
“The revanchists in Armenia, Pashinyan, and his Western patrons are all well aware that the Karabakh conflict has already been resolved, there is no way back, and attempts to put forward additional conditions will have no effect," added Ahmadli.