Iran Press/ Asia: During a meeting with Armenia’s National Security Chief, Armen Grigoryan, who briefed CIA Director William Burns about Armenia’s policy for peace in the region and challenges facing Armenia in the region. Within this context, the issue of normalization of relations with Turkey and Azerbaijan was broached.
Burns also met with Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on Friday and discussed international and regional security issues.
According to Pashinyan’s press service, the two also discussed the processes taking place in the South Caucasus and the continued fight against terrorism.
Earlier on Friday, media sources reported that the Armenian and US governments did not deny reports that Burns was making an unannounced visit to Armenia.
Citing unnamed sources, the Russian news agency Sputnik reported that Burns arrived in Yerevan in the morning for unspecified “high-level meetings.” He will spend only several hours in the country, it said without giving other details.
A spokesperson for Armenia’s National Security Service (NSS) told RFE/RL’s Armenian Service that he has “no information” about the alleged trip.
Other Armenian government agencies refrained from commenting on it. The press office of the government’s Security Council did not answer phone calls throughout the day.
The US Embassy said, for its part, that it has no comment on the Sputnik report. No CIA director has ever visited Armenia before.
According to Tigran Grigoryan, an independent political analyst, the US and Russian security officials arrived in Armenia recently for confidential talks focusing on the war in Ukraine.
“Based on the scarce information available, one can presume that Yerevan or Armenia was simply chosen as the venue for some secret negotiations with Russia,” Grigoryan said. “According to my information, Russian and American experts arrived in Yerevan for that purpose in recent days. So Burns’s visit could be put in that context.”
Burns, 66, is a former career diplomat who served as US ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008.
Burns visited Armenia as well as Azerbaijan in 2011 in his capacity as US deputy secretary of state. During that trip, he urged a greater “sense of urgency” for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, saying that “the status quo is not sustainable.”
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