Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan are in Brussels for a new round of talks aimed at resolving the decades-long conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The talks, chaired by European Council President Charles Michel, come as Azerbaijan’s closure of the Lachin Corridor, the only land link between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, has sparked renewed tensions.
Azerbaijan also accuses Armenian separatists in the breakaway region of using radio jamming against passenger planes.
“The disruption affected two Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft on Thursday. Such incidents pose a serious threat to aviation safety,” according to a statement from the Baku Foreign Ministry.
The separatist government in Nagorno-Karabakh denies the claims, calling them an “absolute lie”.
Russia proposes meeting
While the negotiations are ongoing in Brussels, Russia is trying to take back the initiative as a peace broker in the region and proposes that a Russian-Azerbaijani-Armenian summit be held in Moscow to sign “the relevant peace treaty”.
“Russia is ready to organize a trilateral meeting of foreign ministers in Moscow in the near future,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
Warns of humanitarian crisis
On Friday, around 6,000 people gathered in the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh to demand the reopening of the Lachin Corridor. Local separatists, who warned of a humanitarian crisis, called on Moscow – which has acted as a peace broker in the region several times in the past – to ensure free movement in the area.
Azerbaijan later allowed the Red Cross to resume medical evacuations from Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
FACTS Easy conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh
Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region in the South Caucasus that lies within Azerbaijan’s borders, but is effectively a breakaway region under the wing of Armenia, with a predominantly Armenian population. The area has been at the center of a decades-long territorial conflict between the countries and two wars have been fought over the area.
In August and September 2020, thousands of combatants were killed over six weeks. Russia then brokered a cease-fire agreement, which saw Armenia cede parts of territory it had controlled for decades, while Russia deployed peacekeeping forces manning the five-kilometer-wide Lachin Corridor to ensure free passage between Armenia and Nagorno -Karabakh.
As recently as late June, deadly fighting erupted in the long-disputed region. The parties regularly accuse each other of breaking the ceasefire that is supposed to prevail in the region.
Baku and Yerevan have been trying to negotiate a peace deal with the help of the EU and the US, whose diplomatic involvement in the Caucasus has irked Russia.
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