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A peace treaty can be signed" between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan's ambassador in Paris said on Friday (May 26th), stressing that further potentially decisive discussions would take place at the next meeting of the European Political Community (EPC) on 1st June in Moldova.
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We hope that we can move towards a peace treaty," Abdullayeva said at a meeting with journalists from the Diplomatic Press Association, a day after talks in Moscow.
'A historic moment'
In Chisinau, Moldova, talks will be held between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, she said, stressing that this is the first time the four leaders will meet. The ambassador regretted that the negotiations in Moscow did not result in a "document concerning the opening of communication channels" but there is "progress in the negotiations on the normalization of diplomatic relations" between Baku and Yerevan. "I don't know if a peace treaty will be signed in Chisinau. But it is a historic moment, it is a momentum that must absolutely not be missed, "she insisted.
Baku and Yerevan have been fighting for decades for control of Azerbaijan's predominantly Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh region. Negotiations have intensified and seem to have made progress in recent weeks, led by the European Union and the United States. On 14th May at a meeting organised in Brussels by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, they agreed on the mutual recognition of territorial integrity. But Western mediation irritates Russia, which wants to maintain its influence in the region. Armenia and Azerbaijan fought two wars - at the turn of the 1990s and again in 2020 - for control of Nagorno-Karabakh.
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Six weeks of fighting in autumn 2020 ended with a Moscow-brokered ceasefire, which saw Armenia cede swathes of territory it had controlled for decades. Armenia, which has relied on Russia's military and economic support since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, accused Moscow of failing to fulfill its peacekeeping role in Karabakh. Leyla Abdullayeva stressed that Russian peacekeepers would be present until 2025, and that it was time to decide whether or not to keep them after that date.