European Political Community updates: Azerbaijan ‘ready’ for Armenia talks

That’s it from our Live team today.

If you wish to learn more about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, please read here.

More news on Europe’s migration conundrum is here.

Thank you for joining us.

We are about to wrap up our coverage, so here’s a reminder of what happened today:

• European Union lawmakers accused Azerbaijan of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against the Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh and urged the imposition of sanctions.
• Kosovo’s leader called on Spain to join EU countries in measures against Serbia.
• The prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Italy pressed neighbours on migration.
• The leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan skipped the European Political Community summit.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says Azerbaijan’s military takeover of the Armenian-backed separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month was “inevitable”.

“It was only a matter of time before Azerbaijan started to restore constitutional order there,” Putin said, adding “it was inevitable after [Armenia’s] recognition of Azerbaijan’s sovereignty over Karabakh.”

Putin promised in 2020 that Russian peacekeepers would protect the region’s people, maintain a ceasefire, and assure access on the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia. None of those promises was kept.

Azerbaijan regained control of the Armenian-populated region of Nagorno-Karabakh last month. Since then, more than 100,000 people – most of Karabakh’s population – have fled and sought refuge in Armenia, a country of 2.8 million.

Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego, reporting from Granada, says the topic of asylum seekers is one of the most divisive discussions taking place at the summit.

But she noted two leaders on the same page – the UK’s Rishi Sunak and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni – met on the sidelines of the gathering in southern Spain.

“They’re trying to find some cohesion as to how to tackle the people-smuggling rings that are responsible for bringing undocumented over and causing the pressure on the systems. There are other countries that won’t back down and adamantly remain they will not be taking in any more people who have been arriving on the shores of southern Europe,” she said.

France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijan has been angered by what officials say is French and German bias towards the Armenian position after Baku’s forces seized the disputed territory last month.

The talks began at 3:30pm (13:30 GMT), the French president’s office said.

On arrival in Granada, Pashinyan expressed regret he wouldn’t meet Azerbaijan’s President Aliyev for the chance of signing a “turning point document”.

France, which has a large Armenian diaspora, has traditionally helped mediate the decades-old territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh.

Russia has its hands full with geopolitics and did not have Armenia’s back when Azerbaijan seized the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region in a military operation last month, an analyst says.

“Russia washed its hands after the beginning of the war in Ukraine – the South Caucasus, Karabakh, etc is not the centre of Russian thinking,” said Alexander Iskandaryan, director of the Caucasus Institute.

“The guys are busy in Ukraine. We don’t have weapons from them, which we had before. Politically, you know [Russian President Vladimir] Putin every morning, he does not look at the map of Nagorno-Karabakh. He looks at another map,” he told Al Jazeera.

An Armenian lawmaker says his country has been abandoned after the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave was captured by Azerbaijan.

Armenia and Russia are part of a security treaty of six ex-Soviet nations that must help each other militarily in case of armed conflict. Moscow, however, failed to come to the support of Karabakh’s ethnic Armenians after the attack by Baku.

“You know, we never felt ourselves lonely because we had a lot of countries that supported us before. But simultaneously, we understand perfectly well that for solving our problems, we are alone,” Armenian parliamentarian Vladimir Vardanyan told Al Jazeera.

Zelenskyy has warned European leaders that Russia could rebuild its military capabilities and attack other countries within five years if the continent were to waver in its support for Kyiv.

Providing additional military equipment to Ukraine could mean that a “drone, tank, or any other Russian weapon will not strike anyone else in Europe”, he said.

“We must not allow Putin to destabilise any other parts of the world and our partners in order to ruin Europe’s power,” Zelenskyy said. “The presence of Russia, its military or proxies in the territory of any other country is a threat to all of us. We must work together to push Russia out of the territory of other countries.”

Zelenskyy says he met Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan on the sidelines of the summit and discussed the security situation in the South Caucasus.

“Ukraine is interested in the region’s stability and friendly relations with its nations,” Zelenskyy said on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Azerbaijan says it is “ready” for EU-led talks with Armenia but slammed France’s “militarisation policy” in the South Caucasus.

“Azerbaijan stands ready for tripartite meetings in Brussels soon in the format of the European Union, Azerbaijan and Armenia,” presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev said.

Hajiyev said it is “incorrect to present” President Ilham Aliyev’s no show as a “refusal” to hold talks with Armenia.

Aliyev turned down a meeting with the Armenian leader on the sidelines of the European summit in Granada because of “France’s biased actions and militarisation policy that seriously undermine regional peace and stability in the South Caucasus”, Hajiyev added.

Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, on a visit to Armenia on Wednesday, said France will deliver military equipment to the South Caucasus nation. “France has agreed on future contracts with Armenia that will allow the delivery of military equipment to Armenia so that it can ensure its defence.”

Thursday’s summit is the third reunion of the European Political Community, which was launched in October 2022 in the Czech capital Prague to foster dialogue among European countries.

The event is hosted by the Spanish government, which assumed the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in July.

The European Political Community was first proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, bringing together European Union members and non-EU countries in a wider forum.

Poland’s prime minister has branded an EU migration reform package “a diktat” from Brussels and Berlin and pledged a “firm veto”.

“A very clear question should be asked: why should we agree to a diktat from Brussels, a diktat from Berlin?” Mateusz Morawiecki said in a statement before leaving for the summit in Spain.

Zelenskyy has told European leaders he is confident of the US’s continued support, and has asked for their continued assistance.

In an emotional speech, Zelenskyy said school children in Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine were learning remotely or attending classes underground in subway stations because of air raids.

“Until there is a fully effective air defence system, children cannot attend school,” he told the summit.

He voiced confidence in continued US support despite what he called a “political storm” there recently after aid to Ukraine did not make the cut for a last-minute Congress deal to avoid a government shutdown.

“I am confident in America. They are strong people with strong institutions, and a strong democracy,” he said.

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is expected to make migration one of the key topics in Granada.

Meloni pledged last year to prevent as many new arrivals as possible from across the Mediterranean Sea. However, about 135,000 migrants have landed in Italy, more than double than the same period last year.

Meloni’s far-right coalition government, elected on an anti-migration ticket, has clashed with both France and Germany as she presses other EU countries to share the burden.

“We will continue to defend the borders,” Meloni said this week.

Spain has offered new air defence and anti-drone systems to Ukraine to protect its energy and port infrastructures, a government source has said.

The Spanish army will also train Ukrainian soldiers to use these new systems and provide more demining equipment, the source added.

Kosovo’s president says she hopes Spain would join other European countries in adopting measures against Serbia for the attack by armed Serbs in late September.

Vjosa Osmani-Sadriu said the “horrendous act” was not just committed “against Kosovo, but against peace and stability and security in the entire
European continent”.

Speaking before the summit, Osmani-Sadriu made punitive measures against Belgrade a condition for meeting with her Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic.

“There is no reason to meet [with Serbia] before sanctions are adopted towards Vucic. Sanctions first and then we can talk about the rest,” Osmani-Sadriu told reporters at the summit.

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina have soared since September 24, when Kosovo police near the village of Banjska in northern Kosovo fought around 30 armed Serbs who barricaded themselves in a Serbian Orthodox monastery. Three attackers and one police officer were killed.

EU lawmakers have accused Azerbaijan of carrying out “ethnic cleansing” against the Armenian residents of Nagorno-Karabakh, and urged the bloc to impose sanctions on Baku.

The European Parliament approved a resolution saying it “considers that the current situation amounts to ethnic cleansing and strongly condemns threats and violence committed by Azerbaijani troops”.

The lawmakers called on the EU’s 27 member states to “to adopt targeted sanctions against individuals in the Azerbaijani government” over the assault and alleged human rights breaches in Nagorno-Karabakh.

They also urged the bloc “to reduce the EU dependency towards gas exports from Azerbaijan” and demanded Brussels review its relations with the country.

The resolution – approved by 491 legislators to nine – does not compel the EU to act.

You may have heard that the talks are capped with a royal dinner and tour at the Moorish palace of Alhambra.

Alhambra, the famous palace and fortress, dating from the 13th and 14th centuries is one of the best-preserved sites of the historic Islamic world.

Al Jazeera’s Sonia Gallego reporting from Granada said the city is “famed for being one of the greatest centres of European Islamic civilisation and for fostering a sense of coexistence between communities”.

The famed hilltop architectural gem with its soothing ripples of water and the gentle splash from its fountains has traditionally been known to calm nerves. But in Europe’s halls of politics these days, serenity is hard to come by.