The semi-official Baku site haqqin.az has reported with a one-day delay on the phone conversation between German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan following negotiations with Ilham Aliyev. The media showed noticeable diligence and quoted the official statements of the parties verbatim, which likely indicates that Azerbaijan values this high-level contact between Germany and Armenia.
Furthermore, the publication's principal assessment is that "Germany has undertaken constructive and balanced mediation initiatives in the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia" and recalled the Berlin meeting in 2024 involving Scholz, Pashinyan, and Aliyev, which was preceded by a meeting of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan organized by Germany's Foreign Minister Baerbock.
According to the Azerbaijani site, at this meeting, "the parties clarified the draft of the future agreement." Considering Germany's previous mediation experience, haqqin.az suggested that Chancellor Scholz, "having discussed the prospects of signing a peace treaty with the President of Azerbaijan, found it necessary to call the Prime Minister of Armenia."
In both the negotiations with Aliyev and the phone conversation with Pashinyan, Chancellor Scholz emphasized the importance of peace and stability in the South Caucasus, which is naturally linked to the final signing of the Armenian-Azerbaijani treaty.
About a week before Aliyev's visit to Berlin, his assistant for foreign policy, Hajiyev, recognized that constitutional changes are an internal matter for Armenia and added that issues of interest to Azerbaijan could also be resolved through "other legal mechanisms."
Prime Minister Pashinyan stated that the draft of the new constitution will be published by the end of the year. It follows that a constitutional referendum in Armenia could only take place in 2027. Three weeks from now marks the one-year anniversary of the Washington summit. As they say, time is running out.
The South Caucasus-Central Asia economic and communication connectivity may be an opportunity that the European Union and its leading countries may or may not have if the actual final institutionalization of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan is postponed for another year or two.
In Berlin, the President of Azerbaijan has seemingly "definitively" separated from Russia. This follows the official visit of the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister to Moscow. Can it be understood that the question of signing the peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow is "closed"? But when and where will it be signed? Will the process of "regulating issues that concern Azerbaijan through other legal mechanisms" begin in Armenia?
