On October 14 at the MFA of Armenia Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan held a meeting with OSCE Chairperson-in-office, Foreign Minister of Finland Elina Valtonen, who was on a working visit to Yerevan. The Ministers first had a tête-à-tête meeting, followed by discussions in an enlarged format with the participation of delegations.

In his welcoming remarks, Minister Mirzoyan noted: 

“Madam Chairperson, Madam Minister, my dear friend, welcome to Armenia. I'm very happy to see you with your delegation here in Armenia. Although I will say immediately that I'm not counting this visit as a bilateral one and I'm inviting you to come to see us here also purely as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Finland.

Well, it's not a secret that OSCE has been a very important, probably the most important organization for Armenia for decades, having in mind the conflict that we had here in South Caucasus. Now that we established peace with Azerbaijan, we initialed the Peace Treaty and also we agreed upon the connectivity issue, I mean, unblocking the communications, the transport infrastructure. And also we agreed upon several other things, among which was the important decision to close the Minsk structures. Having this in mind, now we are reassessing our approach and also our participation, our cooperation within OSCE, and we will be focusing more on a positive agenda on cooperation, and we will be relying on your support.

Also, we have noticed that we have been supporting your attempts to put more emphasis on the Helsinki Final Act and its full implementation, also improving the efficiency of the Organization in the context of the turbulent geopolitical processes and trends. We have been supporting your efforts and we will be continuing supporting your efforts. 

I would also like to ask you to come up with your assessment of OSCE's role, OSCE's structures, programs, and that would be a very useful instrument for our vision as well”.

In turn, Elina Valtonen stated: 

”Dear Minister, dear Ararat, so great to be here. It's indeed my first time in beautiful Yerevan and probably not going to be the last one, so thank you also for the invitation to come here one day also as purely Foreign Minister of Finland.

But of course, I have to start with congratulating you on the Peace deal, and while everybody recognizes that there is still a lot of work to be done, it's a very important starting point for more stable, peaceful future, and just so you know, you have our full support and of course anything we can do to help the situation, we will be by your side on this. 

Now, what comes to the OSCE. The OSCE certainly as an organization, but also founded on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, the decalogue, is very well suited in helping also in this situation going forward and also especially empowering the citizens of Armenia to embrace this possibility that the Peace Treaty will bring and also the normalization of the relations in this region, but how that will also contribute to more prosperity and more possibilities for business and transactions is extremely important. And in this regard, we very much welcome, and I'm also very grateful for Armenia's active engagement in OSCE's programmatic activities under the Armenia Cooperation Program.

And the OSCE is very much willing to continue and expand cooperation in areas such as security sector reform, climate security, women's economic empowerment and water management. 

But again, so great to be here, so thanks for the warm welcome for my delegation”.

Following the meeting, the Ministers held a joint press conference.

At the conclusion of the visit, Ararat Mirzoyan and Elina Valtonen took a short walk in 2807-year-old Yerevan.