The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan met for the first time since October at trilateral talks with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Munich Security Conference. Works are underway to reach an agreement on monitoring mechanisms designed to prevent war in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Tensions have escalated between the two South Caucasus nations over a two-month blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only land route giving Armenia direct access to the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region – the bone of contention between the two states since 1917.
Blinken said he welcomed the meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev. The politicians are attending the three-day Munich Security Conference.
"The United States is committed to doing anything we can to support these efforts, whether it's directly with our friends or whether it's in a trilateral format such as this or with other international partners, but I'm very grateful for the presence of both the President and the Prime Minister today and look forward to a good conversation," Blinken said.
As per the statement of Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan: “A project of a comprehensive agreement has been handed to Azerbaijan. The document has to be acceptable to Azerbaijan… its signing must bring about a lasting peace”.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, but its 120,000 inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Armenians, and it broke away from Baku in a first war in the early 1990s. Azeri civilians identifying themselves as environmental activists have been facing off since Dec. 12 with Russian peacekeepers on the Lachin corridor. Saturday's meeting was the two leaders' first face-to-face encounter since late October, when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted talks in the Black Sea city of Sochi. A Dec. 7 meeting in Brussels was scrapped.
At the beginning of february Azerbaijan opened a new front against Armenia — but this one does not include warfare – it involves legal briefs and claims of environmental damage. Azerbaijan is alleging that Armenia despoiled the environment of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnically Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan that has been warred over for 30 years; in 2020, a surprise offensive by Azerbaijan recaptured large chunks of the region which came out to be in tragic ecological state. According to Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Elnur Mammadov, over 500 species in Nagorno-Karabakh are now at risk, including leopards, brown bears, gray wolves and eagles.