Armenia and Azerbaijan, the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus, fought two wars, the first in the early 1990s and the second in 2020, with the aim of controlling the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inhabited by an Armenian majority and unilaterally separated from Azerbaijan three decades ago.
After four days of talks behind closed doors, Armenia and Azerbaijan are expected Thursday to end peace talks in Washington over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, with the White House announcing “progress”.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, who supervised the discussions, is supposed to bring together the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers, Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Jehun Bayramov, in a “closing session” for the talks, according to the US State Department.
The talks between the two sides have been taking place since Monday at a conference center on behalf of former Secretary of State George Shultz outside Washington.
Little information has been leaked about the progress of these negotiations, but Jake Sullivan, National Security Adviser to President Joe Biden, spoke of “progress” Wednesday night in a tweet and said he was “encouraged to continue the dialogue” at the conclusion of a meeting at the White House with the two ministers.
Armenia and Azerbaijan, the two former Soviet republics in the Caucasus, fought two wars, the first in the early 1990s and the second in 2020, with the aim of controlling the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inhabited by an Armenian majority and unilaterally separated from Azerbaijan three decades ago.
Tensions were renewed when Baku announced on April 23 that it had set up the first checkpoint at the entrance to the Lachin corridor, the only land link between Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which has been subject to a blockade for several months, causing a shortage of goods and electricity. A step that Armenia considered a violation of the recent ceasefire between the two sides.
A US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Monday that he expected “frank conversations.”
“Our goal is to ensure that the two ministers sit at the table and talk to each other” for several days in an effort to achieve “a just and lasting peace,” he added.
The negotiations deal specifically with an “agreement on normalization of relations” between the two countries, rather than a formal peace treaty.
Blinken had discussed US support for the peace process between Armenia and Azerbaijan in separate talks with their leaders over the weekend.
Russia said on Tuesday that there was “no alternative” to its mediation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
After a lightning war in which Baku seized lands in this region in the fall of 2020, Baku and Yerevan signed a ceasefire mediated by Moscow.
Since then, Russian peacekeepers have been deployed in Nagorno-Karabakh, but Armenia has been complaining for months about their ineffectiveness.
