(Brussels) The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, sworn enemies, agreed, during a meeting in Brussels on Sunday, to “advance the discussions” on a peace treaty concerning Nagorny Karabakh, a region where a war broke out in 2020, said the President of the European Council.
Posted at 12:12 a.m.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held a “frank and productive” EU-mediated discussion in Brussels, European Council President Charles Michel said on Sunday.
“The leaders agreed to advance discussions on the future peace treaty governing interstate relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Michel said in a statement.
The talks will begin in “the coming weeks”, he said, adding that he had stressed to the two leaders the importance of taking into account “the rights and security of the Armenian population of Karabakh”.
There will also be a “meeting of border commissions” in the coming days, which will address the issues of border demarcation and “the best way to ensure a stable situation”.
Nagorny Karabakh, which the two countries have been fighting over for thirty years, was the stake in 2020 of a six-week war which left more than 6,500 dead before a ceasefire negotiated by Russia.
As part of this agreement, Armenia ceded whole swaths of territory it had controlled since a first victorious war in the early 1990s and a 2,000-man Russian peacekeeping force is deployed in Nagorny Karabakh.
The ceasefire agreement, seen in Armenia as a national humiliation, sparked weeks of anti-government protests, leading Mr. Pashinian to call early parliamentary elections that were won in September by his Civil Contract party.
But demonstrations bringing together thousands of people at the call of the opposition continued in May to demand his resignation.
These are the largest anti-government protests since the September 2021 election.
Another meeting organized by the EU between MM. Aliev and Pashinian is scheduled for July or August, detailed the President of the European Council.
Nagorny Karabakh’s Armenian separatists split from Azerbaijan during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The resulting conflict left an estimated 30,000 dead.