Armenia’s caretaker defence minister, Vagharshak Harutyunyan, spoke on the phone today (17 May) with the Secretary General of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Stanislav Zas.
Harutyunyan presented the ongoing situation on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border to Zas, highlighting that despite some groups of Azerbaijani servicemen having “returned to their starting positions today, some of them are still in the territory of the Republic of Armenia”, and that the situation that caused the issue had not yet be solved. He noted that the Azerbaijanis were under control of the Armenian forces and that troops were being built up on both sides of the border, warning that the situation could be unpredictable if not solved quickly.
Zas reportedly confirmed that the issue would be discussed at the CSTO Council of Foreign Ministers in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, this Wednesday (19 May).
Separately, Hikmet Hajiyev, the Head of the Department of Foreign Policy Affairs of the Presidential Administration of the Republic of Azerbaijan, today visited NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he met with the NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Mircea Geoană.
Last week, the Armenian caretaker prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, accused Azerbaijani troops of a provocation for crossing 3.5km into Armenian territory in the Syunik and Gegharkunik regions. Azerbaijani officials have denied this claim, saying that their servicemen are carrying out work on Azerbaijan's border protection system within the territory of Azerbaijan. On Friday, Pashinyan officially appealed to the CSTO Collective Security Council’s Chairperson-in-Office – the president of Tajikistan – requesting that he launch the mechanism of joint consultations stipulated by Article 2 of the Collective Security Treaty.