The French presidency announced that the Armenian Prime Minister and the Azerbaijani President, who are in intensive negotiations to end the conflict between the two countries, will meet Thursday in Moldova under the auspices of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Yerevan and Baku have been fighting for decades to control the Armenian-majority Azerbaijan region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met at the first summit of the European Political Group in October in Prague.
The German chancellor did not participate in the Prague meeting, but he will attend the meeting in Chisinau, which is held on the sidelines of the second summit of the same group.
Relations between the Azerbaijani and French presidents witnessed great tension at the end of 2022, after Macron accused Russia of “playing the Baku game with Turkish complicity” against Armenia.
Intensification of negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan
Negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have intensified and appear to have made progress in recent weeks, with the push of the European Union and the United States.
Parallel discussions are taking place under the auspices of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as happened last week in Moscow.
On May 14, during a meeting organized by Sharek Michel in Brussels, the two sides agreed to mutual recognition of the unity and territorial integrity of the two countries.
The Azerbaijani ambassador in Paris said on Friday that “a peace agreement may be signed,” stressing that the Chisinau talks could be decisive.
Baku and Yerevan faced off in two wars – in the early 1990s and then in 2020 – over control of Karabakh.
In 2020, Armenia ceded parts of the lands it had controlled for decades; The Azerbaijanis also cut off a vital route linking Armenia with Karabakh for months.
