The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan, who are in the midst of talks to end the conflict, will meet on Thursday in the Republic of Moldova under the auspices of Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and European Council President Charles Michel, the Elysee Palace confirmed on Tuesday, AFP reported.

Yerevan and Baku have been in conflict for decades over control of the predominantly Armenian region of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan.

Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pachinyan and President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev already met in the same context at the first summit of the European Political Community (EPC), which took place in Prague in October.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz did not attend the meeting in Prague, but will attend the meeting in Chisinau, on the sidelines of the second CPE summit.

The relations between the presidents of Azerbaijan and France were greatly strained at the end of 2022, when Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of playing “Baku’s game” against Armenia for “Turkey’s complicity”.

Talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan have intensified and appear to have made progress in recent weeks, with a push from the European Union and the United States.

Parallel negotiations are also taking place under the auspices of Russian President Vladimir Putin, as was the case last week in Moscow.

On May 14, at a meeting organized in Brussels by Charles Michel, they agreed on mutual recognition of territorial integrity.

“A peace treaty can be signed,” the ambassador of Azerbaijan in Paris said on Friday, stressing that the negotiations in Chisinau could become decisive.

Baku and Yerevan fought two wars — in the early 1990s and again in 2020 — over control of Nagorno-Karabakh.

In 2020, Armenia ceded part of the territory it had controlled for decades.

Also, the Azerbaijanis have been blocking the vital road connecting Armenia with Nagorno-Karabakh for several months.