BRUSSELS — The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet again in an effort to reach a resolution to their conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, European Council President Charles Michel said Monday.
The two former Soviet republics have been fighting for decades over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region in Azerbaijan inhabited by a majority of Armenians.
Michel said Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan had agreed to meet on Sunday in a Brussels trilateral meeting.
Their discussions would be flanked by a meeting together with French President Emmanuel Macron of France and Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the sidelines of upcoming European Political Community summit in Chisinau, Moldova, on June 1.
"The leaders have also agreed to continue to meet trilaterally in Brussels as frequently as necessary to address ongoing developments on the ground and standing agenda items of the Brussels meetings," a statement from Michel said.
The leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, France and Germany would also be invited to meet a second time at the margins of the next EPC summit in Granada in October 2023, he said.
Armenia made a peace offer to its neighbor Azerbaijan in mid-February. According to Pashinyan, an agreement should provide for mechanisms of mutual control to prevent breaches of the peace.
The conflict flared up again last year, barely two years after the two countries ended their war over the region. More than 6,500 people were killed in the fighting in 2020, according to estimates. A cease-fire was then negotiated in November 2020 with the mediation of Russia.
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