Armenia and Azerbaijan’s leaders met within the UAE final month, however no breakthrough of their decades-long battle was reached.
United States President Donald Trump will host the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan for peace talks on the White Home, a US official mentioned.
The official instructed the Reuters information company on Tuesday that there’s a risk a framework for a peace settlement might be introduced at Friday’s assembly in Washington, DC.
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met in Abu Dhabi, within the United Arab Emirates, for peace talks last month, however no breakthrough within the decades-old battle was introduced.
The 2 South Caucasus international locations have been in battle with one another because the late Nineteen Eighties, when Nagorno-Karabakh broke away from Azerbaijan with assist from Armenia.
The area, which was claimed by each Azerbaijan and Armenia after the autumn of the Russian Empire in 1917, had a largely ethnic Armenian inhabitants on the time.
Azerbaijan recaptured Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, prompting virtually all the territory’s 100,000 Armenians to flee to Armenia.
Armenia has accused Azerbaijan of “erasing all traces” of the presence of ethnic Armenians within the contested territory, in a case earlier than the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The case stems from the 2020 battle over Nagorno-Karabakh, which left greater than 6,600 individuals lifeless, one in all three full-scale wars that the 2 international locations have fought over the area.
The United Nations’s prime courtroom has ordered Azerbaijan to permit ethnic Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh to return. Azerbaijan says it’s dedicated to making sure all residents’ security and safety, no matter nationwide or ethnic origin, and that it has not pressured ethnic Armenians, who’re largely Christian, to depart the Karabakh area.
Azerbaijan, whose inhabitants are largely Muslim, hyperlinks its historic identification to the territory, too, and has accused the Armenians of driving out Azeris who lived close to the area within the Nineties.
The assembly in Abu Dhabi last month between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev got here after the 2 international locations finalised a draft peace deal in March.
The 2 leaders “agreed to proceed bilateral negotiations and confidence-building measures between the 2 international locations”, however no extra concrete steps have been outlined within the last assertion from the talks.
Ceasefire violations alongside the closely militarised 1,000km (620-mile) shared Armenia-Azerbaijan border surged quickly after the draft deal was introduced in March, however later diminished.