The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan held their first direct talks since the war between these two Caucasian countries in Nagorno Karabakh in 2020 on Saturday in Tbilisi, Georgia.
These discussions between the head of Armenian diplomacy Ararat Mirzoïan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Djeyhoun Baïramov are part of a European mediation aimed at advancing towards a peace treaty.
The two diplomats “discussed a wide range of topics relating to the normalization of relations between the two countries”, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
During the meeting, Mr. Mirzoyan “stressed the importance of a political resolution of the conflict in Karabakh in order to build lasting peace in the region” of the Caucasus, according to the same source.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister called for “the withdrawal of the armed forces of Armenia from the territory of Azerbaijan”, an allusion to the regions of Karabakh still controlled by Armenian separatists.
He also “noted the importance of clarifying the fate of nearly 4,000 missing Azerbaijanis,” according to a ministry statement released in Baku, which added: “Ministers pledged to continue direct dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia”.
A sign of the road that remains to be traveled, these talks were preceded by a rise in tension, the two countries accusing each other of bearing responsibility for a new exchange of fire at the border on the night of Friday to Saturday.
After a first war that killed more than 30,000 people in the early 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan clashed in the fall of 2020 for control of Nagorny Karabakh, a mountainous region which, supported by Yerevan, had seceded from Azerbaijan.
More than 6500 people were killed in this new war. As part of a Moscow-brokered ceasefire agreement, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it controlled.
This agreement is considered in Armenia as a national humiliation and several opposition parties have called for the resignation of Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, whom they accuse of wanting to cede more territory to Baku.
Several armed incidents have taken place in recent months on the border between the two countries.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Mr Pashinyan met twice in Brussels, in April and May, for contacts within the framework of the European Union’s mediation.
Russia, more and more isolated on the international scene because of its invasion of Ukraine, considers the Caucasus as its backyard and takes a dim view of the European initiative.