(Baku) Azerbaijan refused on Thursday to participate in normalization talks with its sworn enemy, Armenia, planned in the United States in November, citing a “biased” position from Washington.
“We consider it not possible to hold the proposed meeting at the level of foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Washington on November 20, 2023,” the Azerbaijani ministry said in a statement.
The move follows a hearing before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday, during which, according to the department, Deputy Secretary of State James O’Brien made “one-sided and biased” about Azerbaijan.
Mr O’Brien told the committee that “nothing will be normal with Azerbaijan after the events of September 19 until we see progress towards peace.”
“We canceled a number of high-level visits and condemned (Baku’s) actions,” he added.
“Such a unilateral approach on the part of the United States could lead them to lose their role as mediators,” estimates the Azerbaijani Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
“The desire (of Yerevan) to sign a peace agreement with Azerbaijan in the coming months remains unshakeable,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian said on Thursday.
Mr. Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev have held several rounds of negotiations under the mediation of the European Union.
But last month, Mr Aliev refused to participate in a round of negotiations with Mr Pashinian in Spain, citing a “biased position” by France.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz were expected to join European Council President Charles Michel as mediators in the talks.
Baku and Yerevan have been engaged for decades in a territorial conflict over the Azerbaijani region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which Baku reconquered in September after a lightning offensive against Armenian separatists.
Almost the entire Armenian population of the region, more than 100,000 people out of the 120,000 recorded, has since fled to Armenia.
Peace talks between the two former Soviet republics have made little progress, but their leaders have said a comprehensive peace deal could be signed by the end of the year.