Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia held telephone discussions for the first time directly
On April 11, 2022, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov had a telephone conversation with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan for the first time. A statement came from both the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministries.
As a follow up to the agreements reached at the level of the leaders of both states, the sides had an exchange of views about the work on the preparation of a future peace treaty, convening of a Joint Border Commission, as well as the humanitarian issues.
On 6 April, at the meeting of the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia in Brussels, they agreed to convene a Joint Border Commission by the end of April and instruct the foreign ministers to work on the preparation of a future peace agreement. The statement came from EU Council President Charles Michel after a meeting.
President Michel said that both President Aliyev and Prime Minister Pashinyan expressed their desire to make rapid progress towards a peace agreement between the two countries. "It was agreed they would instruct the foreign ministers to work on a peace agreement that will cover all necessary issues."
He also noted that the delimitation and demarcation of bilateral borders will be important. "For this purpose, it was agreed to convene a Joint Border Commission by the end of April in accordance with the Sochi Declaration of November 26, 2021.”
Furthermore, the United States and France recently cancelled the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship format on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said.
"In a Russophobic frenzy and in an effort to cancel anything and everything concerning Russia, our so-called French and American partners in the Minsk Group have also cancelled its co-chairmanship, saying they will not communicate with us in this format. It is their right, if they are ready to sacrifice the interests of the Karabakh settlement, if they are ready to sacrifice the interests of the Armenian side," he said at a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan.