Status: 04/07/2022 12:26 p.m
The EU has mediated: Azerbaijan and Armenia want to negotiate a peace agreement a year and a half after the most recent war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. A bilateral commission is to be set up by the end of the month.
According to information from Yerevan, Armenia and Azerbaijan are preparing peace talks in the ongoing conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev agreed on this during talks, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said.
Accordingly, it was agreed to set up a bilateral commission by the end of the month to deal with the border between the two countries.
The European Union mediated the rapprochement. “I am confident that we took important steps in the right direction tonight,” said EU Council President Charles Michel.
6500 people died in the conflict
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds over control of Nagorno-Karabakh for decades. In the summer of 2020, a 44-day war broke out between the two countries in which more than 6,500 people were killed.
The fighting ended in November 2020 with a Russian-brokered ceasefire agreement. Since then, however, there have always been isolated skirmishes with fatalities and injuries.
Russia also sent 2,000 peacekeeping troops to Nagorno-Karabakh. Should tensions there escalate again, this could become a burden for Russia, as tens of thousands of Russian soldiers are already deployed in the Ukraine war.