Representatives of Azerbaijan and Armenian separatists from Nagorno-Karabakh began talks on Thursday following a 24-hour military offensive from Baku to regain control of the separatist territory, the official Azerbaijani agency announced.
The talks will take place in the city of Yevlakh, about 300 kilometers west of the Azerbaijani capital Baku.
Azerbaijan’s official agency, Azertac, released images showing six negotiators around a table.
Among them, according to the French agency AFP, was a representative from Nagorno-Karabakh, David Melkoumian.
Azertac reported that three representatives of Azerbaijan, two of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh and one member of the Russian contingent stationed in the area since 2020 are participating in the talks.
Armenian separatists from Nagorno-Karabakh announced on Wednesday that they agreed to lay down their arms and negotiate reintegration into Azerbaijan.
The decision came a day after Azerbaijan launched a military operation on Azerbaijani territory with a predominantly Armenian population.
According to the separatists, the operation left 200 dead and more than 400 injured.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that two Russian soldiers were killed when their vehicle was struck by fire.
The ceasefire was brokered by the peacekeeping force that Russia has had in Nagorno-Karabakh since the 2020 war, when Azerbaijan retook part of the territory it had previously lost to Armenian separatists.
The Baku presidency said on Wednesday that the parties would “discuss issues of reintegration of the Armenian people on the basis of the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Azerbaijan.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan reaffirmed Ankara’s “unconditional support” for Baku during a phone call with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliev, the Turkish presidency said.
Under pressure from the military might of the Azerbaijani army and Armenia’s decision not to help them, the separatists agreed to surrender their weapons and participate in the first talks on the “reintegration” of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno -Karabakh in Azerbaijan.
However, separatists on Thursday accused Azerbaijan of violating the ceasefire and accused the Azerbaijani armed forces of using “a variety of firearms,” an accusation that the Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense called “completely false and disinformation.”
The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh will be analyzed in New York on Thursday afternoon during an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, the Albanian presidency confirmed on Tuesday evening.
On the eve of the negotiations, the adviser to the Azerbaijani president, Hikmet Hajiev, said that Azerbaijan’s goal was “the peaceful reintegration of the Armenians” of Nagorno-Karabakh and the normalization of relations with Armenia.
Baku could thus potentially regain control over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is mainly inhabited by Armenians and has been the scene of two wars between the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus, Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The first war took place between 1988 and 1994, with a death toll of 30,000, and the second in the autumn of 2020, with 6,500 deaths.
However, Armenia warned the United Nations on Thursday that Azerbaijan was carrying out “ethnic cleansing” and committing a “crime against humanity” by regaining control of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Armenian Ambassador Andranik Hovhannisyan recalled that his country had already warned of an “impending ethnic cleansing” in Nagorno-Karabakh, stressing that “it is now underway.”
“Citizens in Nagorno-Karabakh are trapped with no way out as Azerbaijan continues to block the only lifeline connecting Armenia. This is not just a conflict situation, it is a crime against humanity and must be treated as such.”he warned.
Source: DN
