YEREVAN, OCTOBER 4, ARMENPRESS. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has expressed regret that his planned meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Granada, Spain will not take place. Pashinyan said there was a chance to sign a crucial document at that meeting.

“We’ve been confirming our visit to Granada until the very last moment, even today,” Pashinyan said in parliament during question time. “Furthermore, we had a very constructive and optimistic disposition, because we believed that there was a chance to sign a document of crucial significance. We were assessing that likelihood very high up until this morning. It’s the document which the marionette opposition was doing everything to misrepresent as a devastating document. And because they failed, Armenia did not give in to marionette pressures, it expressed a clear, reasonable and constructive position, made its viewpoints clear, and understandably no one could close the airports, and then we saw what happened. It turned out that the planned meeting won’t take place not because of us. For the record, the marionette opposition won’t get its bonuses, because, indeed the issue is solved but it wasn’t solved by their hands,” Pashinyan said.

The Armenian PM expressed regret that the meeting has been cancelled. He expressed hope that the concept document which is on the negotiation table will be signed at a convenient time.

“I am ready to sign that agreement and I very much regret that tomorrow I won’t have the occasion to announce that this highly important decision was made,” Pashinyan said.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has cancelled his participation in the planned October 5 Granada summit with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, President of the European Council Charles Michel, French President Emmanuel Macron and Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz, according to Azerbaijani media reports.

According to the reports, Azerbaijan opted out of the meeting because Germany and France rejected Azerbaijan’s request to include Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the meeting.