Azerbaijan, Armenia set to resume peace talks

ISTANBUL

Delegations from neighboring Azerbaijan and Armenia will have peace talks in the coming days, the southern Caucasus countries confirmed on Monday.

"Although there was a certain break in the negotiations, work on the text of the peace agreement continued. However, after the meeting between the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and the prime minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference (earlier this month), it was decided to restart the process," Baku-based outlet AzerNews quoted Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov as saying.

"It is planned to hold physical negotiations on the peace agreement between the delegations of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the coming days," Bayramov also said, according to the report.

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ani Badalyan said on Facebook that the meeting "will take place on February 28-29 in Berlin in accordance with the agreement reached during the trilateral meeting in Munich" during the Feb. 16-18 Munich Security Conference.

Relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions, including Kalbajar.

Azerbaijan liberated most of the region during the war in the fall of 2020, which ended with a Russian-brokered peace agreement, opening the door to normalization.

Last September Azerbaijan initiated an anti-terrorism operation in Karabakh to establish constitutional order, after which illegal separatist forces in the region surrendered.

However, tensions on the Azerbaijan-Armenia border reignited on Feb. 12, when Baku said one of its soldiers was injured due to shots fired by Armenian forces toward the country's southwestern Zangilan district

The following day, Azerbaijan said it carried out a "revenge operation" in response, destroying the combat post which fired on its soldiers. Armenia said four of its servicemen were killed.