BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia met on Sunday in Brussels to debate a peace plan for Nagorno-Karabakh that has stoked a wave of protests in Yerevan over opposition claims that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is being too comfortable.
A simmering dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan flared right into a six-week conflict in 2020.
Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory that they had managed for the reason that Nineties in and round Nagorno-Karabakh earlier than Russia brokered a ceasefire.
European Council President Charles Michel held bilateral talks with each Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Pashinyan earlier than that they had a trilateral assembly at which Karabakh was mentioned.
Baku stated Aliyev informed Michel “that Azerbaijan had laid out 5 rules primarily based on worldwide regulation for the normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and for the signing of a peace settlement.”
“The president expressed his hope that the method of drafting the peace settlement between the 2 international locations could be accelerated,” the Azeri presidential workplace stated in an announcement.
Armenia’s Pashinyan mentioned with Michel the scenario round Nagorno-Karabakh, humanitarian points and burdened the necessity to resolve them, the Armenian prime minister’s workplace stated.
But Pashinyan is below stress at house from opponents who say he mishandled the 2020 conflict and declare his current public statements point out he’s giving up an excessive amount of to Azerbaijan.
Pashinyan has confronted a sequence of protests over current weeks in Yerevan since he stated the worldwide neighborhood needed Armenia to “decrease the bar” on its claims to Nagorno-Karabakh.
The unrest additionally coincides with Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, which has prompted many former Soviet neighbours to reassess their very own safety simply as Moscow is preoccupied with the most important confrontation with the West for generations.
(Writing by Guy Faulconbridge in London; Editing by Kirsten Donovan)
