Azerbaijan says talks on peace agreement with Armenia to resume in 'coming days'

By Burc Eruygur

ISTANBUL (AA) - Azerbaijan on Monday said talks on a peace agreement with neighboring Armenia will resume soon.

“Face to face negotiations regarding the peace agreement are planned to be held with the Armenian delegation in the coming days,” Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov told reporters in Baku.

Expressing that work on a draft continued despite a break, Bayramov said President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan decided to restart the process after talks on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.

Bayramov said actions of France serve to aggravate the situation. Baku has accused France of being biased towards Yerevan during peace talks, and has also charged it of inciting conflicts in the Caucasus by arming Armenia.

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

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

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

The Azerbaijani diplomat said many institutions and political centers are worried about Azerbaijan's restoration of its territorial integrity and sovereignty, adding that actions of the EU mission in Armenia created tensions on the border.