ARMENIA: Azerbaijan and Armenia will hold a fresh round of talks in Washington on Sunday in an effort to normalise relations, Yerevan stated on Saturday, after weeks of escalating tensions over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh area.
Armed forces from the two Caucasus neighbours have regularly engaged in gunfire amid disagreements over the mountain enclave, which is recognised internationally as a portion of Azerbaijan but is mainly populated by ethnic Armenians.
The country last Saturday installed a new checkpoint on the Lachin corridor, a road leading to Karabakh that runs through Azeri territory, in an action that Armenia called a flagrant violation of a 2020 ceasefire.
“From April 30, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan will be in Washington DC on a working visit. The next round of discussions on the agreement on normalisation of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan is scheduled,” Ani Badalyan, the spokesperson, wrote on her official Facebook page. Azerbaijan provided no immediate confirmation of the meeting.
Late Saturday, the defence ministry of Armenia said that one of its soldiers had been wounded by shots fired by Azeri forces close to the village of Tegh in the country’s southern Syunik region, as per thnews agency.
The village of Tegh is the last one in Armenia before the Lachin Corridor crosses into Azerbaijan.
In 2020, Russian forces were dispatched to the region to stop the second battle between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991.
Despite years of attempts at mediation, Armenia and Azerbaijan are still unable to come to a peace agreement that would resolve outstanding issues like the delineation of borders and the return of prisoners.
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