News - Toivo Klaar: EU wants to see substantive negotiations leading to Armenia-Azerbaijan peace treaty

Any reports of shootings on the border are disturbing. Toivo Klaar, the European Union (EU) Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, told this to the RFE/RL Armenian Service—and referring to the Armenian-Azerbaijani border tensions amid last week’s Armenia-US-EU meeting in Brussels. Klaar said he does not know whether these ceasefire violations are Azerbaijan's response to the deepening relations between Armenia and the EU, but noted that the EU wants to see real, substantive negotiations that will lead to a peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan, agreements on border delimitation between them, and the opening of communications. Attention should be focused on this, said the EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus, stressing that it is necessary to return to the substantive negotiation process. To the remark that it has been half a year already, the officials are talking about the possible signing of a peace treaty soon and to the question why it is not possible to reach a peace agreement, the EU official replied that there could be several reasons for this, but judging by the information he has, where the process is different directions, he also believes that in reality it should not take so long to achieve a positive result if there is political will. And they want to work in that direction together with Armenia and Azerbaijan in order to achieve a positive result because he believes that it should not take so long if there is political commitment from both sides, Toivo Klaar said.