(Reuters) -Armenia and Azerbaijan on Wednesday agreed to peace talks to address tensions over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which borders both nations, the office of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said.
Pashinyan’s office released a statement after he held talks in Brussels with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. The two men also agreed that by the end of April they would set up a bilateral commission to delimit the joint border, the statement said.
“The Prime Minister of Armenia and the President of Azerbaijan instructed their foreign ministers to begin preparations for peace talks between the two countries,” the statement said. European Council President Charles Michel also attended the Brussels meeting.
Both Russia and the United States had expressed concern about recent developments.
In 2020, Azeri troops drove ethnic Armenian forces out of swathes of territory they had controlled since the 1990s in and around Nagorno-Karabakh before Russia brokered a ceasefire.
Armenia said last month it expected Russia to take action to make Azerbaijan withdraw troops from an area of Nagorno-Karabakh policed by Russian peacekeepers. Azerbaijan said the area was its sovereign territory.
Pashinyan’s office also said the two sides agreed to create “a bilateral commission on the delimitation of the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which will also be authorized to deal with questions of ensuring security and stability along the border.” It did not give details.
(Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ron Popeski; Editing by Leslie Adler)
