US Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Earle Litzenberger, on Thursday (9 June) said that the US is currently engaged in dialogue with both Yerevan and Baku to figure out the best role the US can play to support the key elements of an Armenia-Azerbaijan peace process.
Litzenberger praised the EU for its recent work, stating that the US strongly supported these efforts to facilitate the direct engagement and contact between the sides, “including engagements at the summit level, foreign ministerial level, security advisor level and among the working groups that have been set up now to discuss the issues like border demarcation and delimitation and opening up the transportation links that are going to be absolutely essential to the continued economic development of the region as a whole”.
Earlier this week, the US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Karen Donfried, expressed hope that Armenia and Azerbaijan now have a real chance to move forward with the peace process and normalise relations. She said that both countries had taken important steps in attempting to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict peacefully.
Azerbaijan has long claimed that the normalisation of relations cannot take place under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs, traditionally the US’s main platform to engage with the conflict. Even Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, recently raised doubts about its future in light of recent events. Many consider that the war in Ukraine, and the complete collapse of US-Russia relations, has put the final nail in the coffin of an already moribond process.