(Reuters) – Azerbaijan has conveyed new proposals to Armenia as part of long-running attempts to reach a peace deal, but major differences remain between the two camps, Armenia’s foreign minister said Foreign Affairs, quoted Wednesday by the official press.
Yerevan received Baku’s new proposals on Tuesday in response to a peace plan it had previously transmitted, Ararat Mirzoyan said, according to comments reported by the Armenpress news agency.
“There is a process, there is a discussion (…) Unfortunately I am forced to note that there are important questions on which the positions of the two camps are still far from each other,” he said.
As the two former Soviet Union countries fight over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, with two wars in the past three decades, tensions have risen again this month, with Baku and Yerevan accusing each other of deploy troops.
Nagorno-Karabakh is recognized by the international community as a region of Azerbaijan. It is controlled and populated mainly by Armenian ethnic groups.
Earlier this week, Russian news agency TASS reported that Armenia’s top diplomat announced a possible meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders next month in Spain.
However, it appears that Ararat Mirzoyan’s comments referred to an idea raised in July by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, when he received the two leaders.
Baku did not immediately comment on its latest exchanges with Yerevan or on a possible high-level meeting.
Despite the tensions, progress appears to have been made to unblock access roads to Nagorno-Karabakh and thus allow the delivery of more goods to its inhabitants.
The region is experiencing a food shortage due to restrictions Azerbaijan has put in place for nine months to prevent what it describes as smuggled arms deliveries.
(Reuters editorial; French version Jean Terzian, edited by Zhifan Liu)
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