PARIS, May 26 (Reuters) – Azerbaijan and Armenia could sign a peace deal ending their decades-long conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh territory at a European summit scheduled for next week, declared Friday the envoy of Baku in France.
The signing would take place during a meeting of the leaders of the two countries on the occasion of the summit of the European Political Community (EPC) which is being held next Thursday in Moldova.
“On June 1 in Chisinau, we are waiting for a peace treaty to be signed at last,” Azeri diplomat Leyla Abdullayeva told reporters from the diplomatic press association.
“It’s a historic moment. It’s a moment that absolutely must not be missed.”
The summit in Chisinau will bring together the Member States of the European Union and 17 other European countries. Nearly 47 heads of state, government and EU institutions are expected to attend.
On the sidelines of the summit, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azeri President Ilham Aliev are expected to hold talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, diplomatic sources said.
The two leaders already met on Thursday in Russia, traditionally the main intermediary between the two countries located at the southwestern end of the former Soviet union.
They agreed on the organization of new trilateral talks between the officials of the three countries next week.
Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijani territory but populated mainly by Armenians, has been a source of conflict since the years before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Since the end of the last conflict in 2020 – at the end of which Azerbaijan took over large swathes of territory in Nagorno-Karabakh – tensions have regularly resurfaced around the Lachine corridor, the only road linking Armenia to the enclave.
Progress has recently been made towards a settlement based on mutual recognition of each party’s territorial integrity. (Report John Irish; French version Gaëlle Sheehan, edited by Blandine Hénault)
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