In an interview with Armenpress, Toivo Klaar, EU's special representative for the crisis in the South Caucasus and Georgia, referred to the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
According to him, It all depends on how Armenia and Azerbaijan in the end decide how to frame, how to phrase things in that treaty text.
"At least as important as the eventual peace treaty, is what you refer to as the implementation, the conditions that come afterwards. And there of course, we talked about the opening of communications, we talked about the delimitation of the border, to me also what is very important is to ensure the kind of conditions along the border, which means that there is a distancing of forces, a genuine sense of security that arises, and that is provided to residents along the border, but also more broadly," Klaar said.
He believes that there have been statements by different actors and in different contexts. The whole context has to change in terms of really providing a sense for the populations in Armenia and Azerbaijan, that, really, we are in a different world now, in a situation where the South Caucasus can really fulfil its role as crossroads, crossroads of peace in the north-south and east-west directions. And so, this is to me at least as important as the signing of a peace treaty text, which, as I say is important, but what follows that is at least as important, so that there's this real sense of a change in the circumstances.
As for the decision of Azerbaijani President Aliyev not to go to Granada, the special representative of the European Union noted that the Union is disappointed with that decision.
"We were disappointed, we thought that it was an important possibility and quite important forum to send strong messages. We are still, President Michel is still, ready and willing to organise a meeting of the leaders in Brussels at the earliest possible opportunity. Well, dates certainly are important. But the most important thing is to actually move forward and that is what we are focused on, to try to encourage forward movement in a genuine normalisation of relations," Klaar said.
