YEREVAN (RFE/RL)—Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian will visit Moscow next week for fresh talks with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, his press office said on Friday.
A one-sentence statement issued by the office did not specify issues that will be on the agenda of the “short working visit” scheduled for April 20. The Kremlin also gave no details in a separate statement announcing the trip.
Sarkisian, who is currently on vacation in an undisclosed European country, will fly to the Russian capital just one week after his talks in Washington with U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The talks focused on ways of salvaging the Turkish-Armenian normalization protocols signed last October. Sarkisian also reportedly discussed with Obama and Clinton international efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that are spearheaded by the United States, Russia and France.
The discussions took place on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit hosted by Obama. Medvedev and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also participated in the summit. Lavrov was shown talking to Sarkisian in one of the photographs of the Washington trip released by the Armenian presidential press office.
Medvedev and Sarkisian already met outside Moscow three months ago. The two men praised their countries’ common geopolitical interests in the South Caucasus.
The Armenian leader thanked the Kremlin for “supporting our initiatives to strengthen peace and stability in our region.” He seemed to refer to an effective Russian endorsement of Yerevan’s position on the normalization of Turkish-Armenian ties.
Meeting with Erdogan earlier in January, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin publicly urged Ankara to stop linking the implementation of the Turkish-Armenian protocols with the resolution of the Karabakh conflict.
President Sargsyan, I guess, waits for the vote results of Turkish Cypriots. This will be a major political event in recent years, which has a strong diplomatic energy for the finalization (or at least better outlining) of the Close and Middle East.