Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders meet for peace talks in UAE

Draft woody to extremity bitter decades-long struggle agreed 4 months ago, but timeline for sealing it remains uncertain.

The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan are holding bid talks successful the United Arab Emirates aft astir 4 decades of conflict.

The gathering successful Abu Dhabi connected Thursday betwixt Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, confirmed by some their governments, comes aft the 2 countries finalised a draft bid deal successful March.

The South Caucasus countries person fought a bid of wars since the precocious 1980s erstwhile Nagorno-Karabakh, a portion successful Azerbaijan that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian colonisation astatine the time, broke distant from Azerbaijan with enactment from Armenia.

Peace talks began aft Azerbaijan recaptured Karabakh successful a lightning violative successful September 2023, prompting a immense exodus of astir each of the territory’s 100,000 Armenians, who fled to Armenia.

But the timeline for sealing a woody remains uncertain.

Ceasefire violations on the heavy militarised 1,000km (620-mile) shared borderline surged soon aft the draught woody was announced, though determination person been nary reported violations recently.

In a imaginable stumbling artifact to a deal, Azerbaijan has said it wants Armenia to alteration its constitution, which it says makes implicit claims to Azerbaijani territory.

Yerevan denies this, but Pashinyan has repeatedly stressed successful caller months – astir precocious this week – that the South Caucasus country’s founding charter needs to beryllium updated.

Azerbaijan besides asked for a transport corridor done Armenia, linking the bulk of its territory to Nakhchivan, an Azerbaijani enclave that borders Baku’s ally, Turkiye.

Pashinyan and Aliyev’s past brushwood was successful May, connected the sidelines of the European Political Community acme successful Tirana, Albania.

In June, Pashinyan made a rare visit to Istanbul to clasp talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a gathering Armenia described arsenic a “historic” measurement towards determination peace.

This week, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed anticipation for a swift bid woody betwixt the Caucasus neighbours.

The outbreak of hostilities betwixt the 2 countries successful the precocious 1980s prompted wide expulsions of hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim Azeris from Armenia, and Armenians, who are bulk Christian, from Azerbaijan.