Azerbaijan and Armenia are preparing to hold peace talks after the leaders of both countries ordered their top diplomats to launch preparations following a meeting on Wednesday, Armenia’s foreign ministry said.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian "ordered foreign ministers to begin preparatory work for peace talks between the two countries," during an EU-mediated meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, the foreign ministry in Yerevan said in a statement.
"An agreement was reached during the meeting ... to set up a bilateral commission on the issues of delimitation of the Armenian-Azerbaijan border, which will be in charge of ensuring security and stability along the frontier," the ministry added.
Aliyev and Pashinian met Wednesday in Brussels for rare talks mediated by the European Council President Charles Michel.
The meeting came after a flare-up in Nagorno-Karabakh on March 25 that saw Azerbaijan capture a strategic village in the area under the Russian peacekeepers' responsibility, killing three separatist troops.
Moscow and Yerevan at the time accused Azerbaijan of a cease-fire violation, but Baku rejected the accusation, insisting the area was part of its internationally recognized territory.
Yerevan also called on Baku to start peace talks "without delay." Baku agreed, saying it had already put forward such a proposal a year ago.
Last month, Azerbaijan sent a proposal containing five conditions to normalize relations with Armenia. Azerbaijan’s one-page proposal outlined the main principles in line with international relations and does not contain anything "out of the ordinary," according to Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.
One of the points in the proposal includes the demarcation of the borders between the two countries, which Azerbaijan had proposed to solve, but Armenia had consistently brought preconditions to address it.
In 2020, Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a war over the Armenian-occupied region of Nagorno-Karabakh that claimed more than 6,500 lives.
A cease-fire deal brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin saw Armenia cede swathes of territory to Azerbaijan, and Moscow deployed a peacekeeping contingent in the mountainous region.
