Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders to meet amid fighting

Nikol Pashinyan and Ilham Aliyev will meet in Brussels on April 6 for talks to end the decades-long conflict over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said Thursday he will meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Brussels on April 6 and for talks to end the decades-long conflict over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

There have been recent clashes that have raised concerns about the stability of a cease-fire that ended the 2020 war over the separatist region.

“I hope to discuss at this meeting with the president of Azerbaijan and agree on all issues related to the start of negotiations on a peace agreement,” Pashinyan told a government meeting Thursday. He said Armenia “is ready for the immediate start of peace negotiations.”

Fighting between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces reignited in Nagorno-Karabakh this month, and three soldiers in the breakaway region were killed last week.

More than 5,500 soldiers were killed in the six-week war in 2020 that ended with Azerbaijan regaining areas surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh that had been under Armenian control since the end of a separatist war in 1994. Most of Nagorno-Karabakh itself remains under the control of ethnic Armenian forces, although it is within Azerbaijan. The cease-fire was mediated by Russia, which then sent some 2,000 troops it called peacekeepers to the region.