President of the European Council Charles Michel spoke of “progress” in negotiations between its leaders Armenia and his Azerbaijan which were held yesterday Sunday in Brussels and called for maintaining the trajectory of movement towards an agreement between the two countries.

Two Caucasian states have been in conflict for control of the enclave for about thirty years. Nagorno-Karabakh.

The meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev – the fifth of its kind under European mediation – took place at the end of a week marked by new clashes on the borders of the two countries, during which one Armenian and one Azerbaijani soldier participated.

However, Mr. Michel assured after the meeting that the leaders of the two countries “share a common will for peace” and described their talks as “sincere, open and productive.”

“Following the recent positive talks that took place in the United States on a peace agreement, the momentum must be maintained to take decisive steps towards the signing of a comprehensive peace agreement,” added the President of the European Council.

The European official was referring to four days of intensive talks between the parties in early May in Washington under US auspices.

“Pure Progress”

Charles Michel said that the leaders of the two countries agreed to resume bilateral meetings on the issue of border demarcation. “Obvious progress” has been made in unblocking transport, “especially in restoring rail links to, from and through” the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhchivan, between Armenia and Iran, he said.

The two leaders also agreed to release more prisoners “in the coming weeks,” he added.

A new meeting between Mr. Pashinyan and Aliyev is scheduled for June 1 in Moldova, which will be attended by French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in addition to Charles Michel, on the sidelines of the second summit of the European Political Community.

The two former Soviet republics of the Caucasus have been involved in two wars, in the 1990s and 2020, for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region populated mostly by Armenians that broke away from Azerbaijan more than three decades ago.

After a short war in the fall of 2020, when Azerbaijan recaptured the territory, Baku and Yerevan signed an agreement mediated by Moscow. Since then, Russian soldiers have guaranteed peace in Nagorno-Karabakh, but Armenia has been complaining for months about the ineffectiveness of that mission.

Tensions, already high, escalated further when on April 23 Baku announced the installation of a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor road, the only link between Armenia and the separatist enclave, which had been blocked for months, resulting in power outages. .

^{Source: APE, AFP, Reuters.}