Scene-setter: Azerbaijani-Armenian leaders meeting for sixth time to hammer out difficulties toward peace deal
By Sabina Mammadli
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are holding the sixth meeting in Sochi today under the aegis of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a bid to hammer out difficulties toward a long-expected peace deal.
The Sochi meeting promises to bring the ultimate goal of the possible signing of a peace deal closer, as well as give impetus to closing gaps on issues the parties cannot come to terms with yet.
Ahead of today's meeting, Putin reminded that he has repeatedly held meetings in a trilateral format with the Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts, however, the tides have recently shifted in the region as all five in-person meetings of the South Caucasus leaders were mediated by the European Union.
Aliyev and Pashinyan last met in Prague on October 6, joined by frequent actors in the mediation mission, that is, EU Council President Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron.
Following the statement made on the results of the meeting, Azerbaijan and Armenia confirmed their commitment to the UN Charter and the Alma Ata Declaration of 1991 through which both countries recognized each other's territorial integrity and sovereignty.
Besides, Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed on an EU civilian mission, to be sent to Armenia along its border with Azerbaijan. Baku will cooperate with this initiative, as far as it is concerned. In his Astana speech on 14 October, President Aliyev revealed that the original EU concept was for the mission to be present on Azerbaijani territory, but Baku flatly rejected it.
Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders met for the fourth time in Brussels on August 31 under the auspices of EU Council President Charles Michel to look into ways of expediting preparations for drafting a peace deal.
After the meeting, Michel said that Azerbaijan and Armenia decided to accelerate substantive work on the peace treaty governing inter-state ties between the two countries and tasked the foreign ministers to meet within a month to work on a draft text. The parties also thoroughly discussed humanitarian issues, like demining, detainees, and the fate of missing people.
On May 22, another EU Council President Michel-mediated Brussels meeting was held between Aliyev and Pashinyan. At the meeting, the parties agreed to start the work of the commission on the delimitation of the borders, and also agreed on the need to start unblocking transport links in the region and discuss a future peace treaty.
Notably, Pashinyan and Aliyev previously met with the Russian president nearly a year ago on November 26, 2021, when the three leaders signed a statement and agreed on a number of issues, including the demarcation and delimitation of the Azerbaijani-Armenian border.
On January 11, 2021, the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders signed the second statement since the end of the 44-day war. The newly-signed statement was set to implement clause 9 of the November 2020 statement related to the unblocking of all economic and transport communications in the region.
The first step towards the normalization process was the trilateral ceasefire deal signed by the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian leaders on November 10, 2020, which ended the three-decade conflict over Azerbaijan’s Karabakh region, which along with the seven adjacent districts came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the early 1990s.
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Sabina Mammadli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SabinaMmdl
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