Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers Ararat Mirzoyan (right) and Jeyhum Bayramov meet in Washington on May 1

Days after the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan are scheduled to meet in Brussels on May 14, the foreign ministers of the two countries also will hold talks in Moscow next week.

Armenia’s Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that foreign ministers Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov will meet in Moscow on May 19.

Next week’s meeting will mark the first time that the two foreign ministers will meet after holding four-day talks near Washington last week, hosted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. In his public comments, Blinken said that progress for normalizing relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan was made and peace between the countries was “within reach.”

Mirzoyan, while encouraged by the Washington talks, said that “lingering differences” remained between Yerevan and Baku. Pashinyan later said those difference centered on the security and safety guarantees for Karabakh and its people, which has been exacerbated by the almost five-month-long blockade of Artsakh by Azerbaijan.

Armenia’s National Security chief Armen Grigoryan told reporters on Tuesday that there has been no progress on some of the most crucial issues in its talks with Baku.

“We have stated many times our approach regarding Artsakh, that international mechanisms should be created, Stepanakert and Baku should discuss rights and security issues,” Grigoryan said Tuesday, adding that the provisions of the November 9, 2020 agreement were being overtly and blatantly ignored.

Meanwhile, Bayramov said on Wednesday that he and Mirzoyan made progress toward a peace treaty between the Washington talks last week.

“It cannot be said that we fully reached an agreement as there are quite a lot of differences between the positions of the parties,” he told reporters. “But some points of the peace treaty were agreed upon in those negotiations. We took a step forward.”