11:11, 5 October 2023
YEREVAN, OCTOBER 5, ARMENPRESS. Washington has confirmed that top officials from the United States, EU and Russia held a meeting in Istanbul days before Azerbaijan launched an attack in Nagorno-Karabakh.
The meeting was first reported by POLITICO and described as ‘secret’. The U.S. State Department, however, refused to describe the talks as such.
“I’d perhaps first take issue with the characterization of it being a secret meeting,” U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a press briefing when asked on the meeting. “We engage with stakeholders and interlocutors in the region quite regularly, and the meeting in Istanbul on September 17th came together to address specifically urgent humanitarian issues and the provision of potential humanitarian aid in Nagorno-Karabakh. That’s what that meeting was about. But broadly, the U.S. remains deeply engaged on the situation and we continue to be committed to helping the parties achieve a lasting peace in the South Caucasus,” he added. Patel said it was a meeting of Minsk Group co-chairs at the working level.
The U.S. State Department spokesperson declined to disclose who initiated the meeting.
“It was a meeting that took place at the working level…this was a specific topic on the issue of humanitarian needs in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. That was the scope and the context of this meeting. I would not expand it or overinterpret this to mean anything else,” Patel said.
“Broadly, this is a situation that we have continued to be deeply concerned about. I don’t want to boil down on one specific moment. But we’re of course concerned by the situation after the recent hostilities, and it has resulted in over 100,000 ethnic Armenians fleeing the Nagorno-Karabakh region into Armenia, and we’re closely monitoring the situation on the ground. Of course, we continue to be concerned and paying close attention to the humanitarian impacts. That’s why – part of the reason why this meeting had been taking place,” the State Department spokesperson said when asked whether the U.S. was frustrated that two days after the meeting the Azeri offensive began.