Peace talks in Brussels between the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are scheduled to meet in Brussels on Sunday, May 14, 2023. © Gavriil Grigorov & Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, AP - RFI Editing

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are due to meet on Sunday 14 May in Brussels at the invitation of Charles Michel, President of the European Council. They are due to discuss a peace deal after more than 30 years of conflicting relations, including over Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked province in Azerbaijan but populated mainly by Armenians, which led to two wars between the two former Soviet republics in the South Caucasus.

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With our regional correspondent, Régis Genté

This meeting in the Belgian capital will be the fifth between Nikol Pashinian and Ilham Aliyev since the end of the second Nagorno-Karabakh war, on November 9, 2020. Optimists want to see it as a sign of the willingness of both sides to conclude a peace that would end more than three decades of conflict.

Especially since the foreign ministers of the two republics of the South Caucasus had met for four days in Washington at the beginning of the month, during talks where, according to the American hosts, "tangible" progress had been made. But we cannot ignore the week's clashes on the common border, which caused the death of an Azerbaijani soldier on Wednesday, May 10, while four Armenians were wounded.

Such incidents have been repeated for two years, after Azerbaijani forces seized thousands of hectares of Armenia's sovereign territory, presumably to put pressure on Yerevan and secure peace on Baku's terms. Never in 30 years has peace seemed so close. But this comes with the impression that war may just as well resume any moment.

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Read on on the same topics:

  • Armenia
  • Azerbaijan
  • Nikol Pashinyan
  • Ilham Aliev
  • Belgium
  • Nagorno-Karabakh