Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev are due to meet this Sunday, May 14 in Brussels, at the invitation of Charles Michel, President of the European Council. They must discuss a peace agreement after more than 30 years of conflicting relations, in particular about Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked province in Azerbaijan, but populated mainly by Armenians, which led to two wars between the two former republics South Caucasian Soviets.
With our regional correspondent, Regis Gente
This meeting in the Belgian capital will be the fifth between Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev since the end of the Second World War. Nagorno-KarabakhNovember 9, 2020. Optimists want to see it as a sign of both sides’ willingness to strike a peace that would end more than three decades of conflict.
And all the more so since the foreign ministers of the two republics of the South Caucasus had met for four days in Washington at the beginning of the month, during talks where, according to the American hosts, progress “ tangible would have been done. But we cannot ignore fights of the week on the common border, which on Wednesday May 10 caused the death of an Azerbaijani soldier, while four Armenians were injured.
Such incidents have been repeated for two years, after Azerbaijani forces seized thousands of hectares of Armenia’s sovereign territory, presumably to pressure Yerevan for peace on Baku’s terms. Never in 30 years has peace seemed so close. But with that comes the feeling that war might as well resume at any moment.
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