IRIA News

Foreign Ministers from Armenia and Azerbaijan in Washington to attend the U.S.-hosted peace talks. The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken mediated the two-day talks between the two top diplomats from the rival countries. 

Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov led their delegations in Washington to quell long-standing tensions over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. “Dialogue is key to reaching a lasting peace in the South Caucasus region,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted on the first day of peace talks on May 1, 2023. The tweet included photos of Blinken warmly greeting Mirzoyan and Bayramov. 

Blinken also held one-on-one meetings with the two foreign ministers before the trilateral talks kicked off on the first day. The peace talks resumed on the second day on May 2. A senior official from the U.S. State Department said that Washington hopes that the two countries would be able to “strengthen their common economic ties” and “reinforce their collective security in the region.” 

Hosting peace talks this week with Foreign Minister @AraratMirzoyan and Foreign Minister @Bayramov_Jeyhun at our new facility at the George P. Schultz National Foreign Affairs Training Center. Dialogue is key to reaching a lasting peace in the South Caucasus region. pic.twitter.com/LGYEkcq3ig

— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 1, 2023

The talks in the United States are aimed at “an agreement on normalization of relations” rather than a peace treaty. The talks are continuing and May 4 is the last day of negotiations, according to the preliminary reports.

Azerbaijan and Armenia did not release any details of the outcomes of the meetings held in Washington. A statement released by the Armenian Foreign Ministry said that issues related to the “regional security situation and the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan were discussed. The humanitarian situation that has developed as a result of the illegal blocking of the Lachin corridor by Azerbaijan was mentioned.”

The wave of intervention to find stability between the two countries comes after Washington voiced “deep concern” over Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor. The Lachin Corridor is a highly strategic mountain road that links Armenia to the Nagorno-Karabakh region. It is the only land route that allows Armenia to send crucial supplies to the 120,000 ethnic Armenians living in the mountainous enclaves. The corridor has been policed by the Russian peacekeeping police since December 2020. 

Earlier this month, Azerbaijan installed a check post on the Lachin Corridor sparking fears for the population living in the Armenian enclaves. Although Azerbaijan maintains that the land route is open for humanitarian deliveries, emergency services, and peacekeepers, some human rights watchdogs claimed that Azerbaijan’s blockade had left ethnic Armenian residents in Nagorno-Karabakh without access to essential goods and services, including life-saving medication and health care. The United States expects the “commercial movement of goods” to start soon in the blocked Lachin Corridor to ensure the free movement of commercial and humanitarian traffic and people.

There have been several attempts from all over the world to break a peace deal between Azerbaijan and Armenia. In October 2022, European Union deployed 40 monitoring experts along the Azerbaijan-Armenia border to stop the clashes between the two forces. 

Russia has also hosted several sessions of talks between the representatives of the two countries without substantial success in brokering a peace deal. The Kremlin also responded to the recent talks hosted by the U.S. by stating that any effort to resolve the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is welcome but the basis of any long-term solution should be a Russian-brokered peace agreement signed in 2020.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on May 2 that there is “no alternative” solution except the Russian-brokered deal between Baku and Yerevan. “For the moment, there is no other legal basis that would help a resolution,” Peskov added. “There is no alternative to these trilateral documents,” he told reporters in Moscow.