Region mainly populated by Armenians, but internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh is at the heart of a territorial conflict between Baku and Yerevan which led to two wars. Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian met in Belgium for new negotiations on a lasting solution to decades of conflict, under the auspices of European Council President Charles Michel.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said the talks focused on, among other things, “the worsening humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh”, and that the two sides “agreed to intensify work aimed at resolving the problems existing. “Our discussions were once again frank, honest and substantial,” noted Charles Michel.
The latter encouraged the two leaders “to take courageous steps to ensure decisive and irreversible progress on the road to normalization”. “As a matter of priority, violence and harsh rhetoric must stop in order to create an environment conducive to peace talks,” he stressed.
Charles Michel has also announced his intention to organize a new meeting with Ilham Aliyev and Nikol Pashinian in Brussels after the summer, as well as a five-way discussion at the beginning of October in Granada (southern Spain), with the French president. Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the sidelines of the next summit of the European Political Community.
The United States had already hosted meetings at the level of foreign ministers in early May and late June between Armenia and Azerbaijan aimed at finding a settlement of the conflict. Washington had called on Wednesday for the restoration of free movement on the Lachin corridor, the only road linking Armenia to the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh – closed on Tuesday by Azerbaijan – and called on Baku and Yerevan to continue their dialogue.
Mr. Pashinyan denounced Thursday an illegal “blockade” of Nagorno-Karabakh, and several thousand people demonstrated Friday in Stepanakert, the main city of this region, calling on Baku to reopen this axis.
The involvement in the region of Western countries, especially the EU, is growing while the traditional policeman of the Caucasus, Russia, bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine, seems to be losing its means of action.
In the fall of 2020, Moscow sponsored the ceasefire agreement at the end of a six-week war that saw the defeat of Armenian forces, forced to cede territories they had controlled for decades. . Russia had pledged to deploy soldiers to guarantee free movement between Armenia and Karabakh, but Yerevan accuses Moscow of failing in this task.
On Saturday, in an effort to regain control of this process, the Kremlin offered to host a meeting at the level of foreign ministers, while suggesting that the future peace treaty could be signed in Moscow. Russia is ready “to hold a trilateral meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow in the near future,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Russia also offers to host “a Russia-Azerbaijan-Armenia summit in due course to sign the relevant (peace) treaty”.
But for now, tensions have escalated a notch. The Azerbaijani Defense Ministry claimed on Saturday that Armenian separatists are producing “radio interference directed at GPS navigation systems of local and foreign airlines” flying in Azerbaijan.
“These incidents pose a serious threat to aviation safety,” the ministry said in a statement. According to this source, on July 13, an Azerbaijan Airlines plane flying to the locality of Fizuli in Nagorno-Karabakh suffered a GPS system failure due to alleged interference.
Armenian separatist authorities have dismissed these accusations, calling them “a complete lie”. Since the 2020 conflict, connections between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia have only been possible by one road axis, the Lachin corridor.
This was closed on Tuesday by Azerbaijan on the grounds of acts of “smuggling” carried out by the Armenian branch of the Red Cross, which was nevertheless able to resume medical evacuations from Nagorno-Karabakh on Friday. Yerevan has feared for several months a serious humanitarian crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh, due to increasingly difficult access conditions.
