Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Friday called off a meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian that was supposed to take place on Dec. 7 in Brussels after the Armenian leader demanded that French President Emmanuel Macron mediate the discussion.
"Pashinian has agreed to the meeting only on condition that the President of France Macron takes part," Aliyev told an international conference in Azerbaijan's capital Baku, adding, "that means the meeting will not take place."
Azerbaijan accuses France of backing Armenia in its decadeslong conflict over the region of Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. The Armenian military occupied Karabakh and seven adjacent regions in 1991. Türkiye has backed Azerbaijan in the conflict.
Aliyev on Friday said Macron has adopted an "anti-Azerbaijan position" and was "insulting" Baku.
"So, he should not act as a go-between," he added.
Aliyev accused his Armenian counterpart of trying to undercut the next stage of talks by insisting that France must be a broker.
"It is clear that under these circumstances, with this attitude, France cannot be part of the peace process between Azerbaijan and Armenia," Aliyev added.
Following Aliyev's statements, Armenia's Foreign Ministry said it wanted to maintain the "Prague format" of discussions, which involved Macron and European Council head Charles Michel.
A spokesperson said Baku's assertion that Yerevan was trying to disrupt peace talks "has nothing to do with reality," the Interfax news agency reported later in the day.
Macron has accused Moscow of stoking tensions between Baku and Yerevan and has also affirmed his support for Armenia's sovereignty in phone calls with Pashinian.
Armenia also said on Friday that Azerbaijan had not yet responded to its latest proposals for a peace agreement, which it presented at a meeting between their foreign ministers in Washington at the start of November.
Fighting between the two former Soviet nations flared in September; at least 286 people were killed on both sides before a U.S.-brokered truce ended the worst clashes since 2020 when Armenian attacks escalated into an all-out war.
Over 6,500 lives were lost in six weeks; then a Russian-brokered cease-fire saw Armenia cede swathes of territory it had illegally occupied for decades and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
The two countries have recently begun working on a peace treaty under the mediation of the European Union and the United States.
In October, Aliyev denounced as "unacceptable and biased" Macron's televised comments that "Azerbaijan launched a terrible war, with many deaths, (and) atrocious scenes."
Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said at the time that Baku was "forced to reconsider France's role in mediating" the peace talks.
Last week, the French Senate passed a resolution proposing sanctions on Azerbaijan over what it claimed as "aggression" against Armenia, a move that drew the condemnation of Baku.
This year, Aliyev and Pashinian met several times in Brussels and Moscow.
Last month, they met for talks mediated by Macron and Michel in Prague where they agreed to allow a civilian EU mission to be set up on their border.
In early November, Baku and Yerevan traded accusations of provoking a shootout along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border in what was dubbed the worst fighting between the two since the 2020 war.
Hours later, the sides met for U.S.-mediated peace talks in Washington on Nov. 7 and agreed to expedite negotiations and continue to engage in direct dialogue and diplomacy.
Most recently, Aliyev separately spoke with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and the envoy for the normalization of Azerbaijan-Armenia relations, Igor Khovayev, to discuss his country’s efforts on the normalization process and the creation of a peace deal.