The European Council is about to launch a two-month civilian operation to delineate the disputed border between the 2 nations

The EU will launch a two-month civilian mission to outline the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan, in a bid to resolve a long-running dispute, in keeping with a press release by the European Council printed on Friday.

Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Prague on Thursday on the invitation of French President Emanuel Macron and European Council President Charles Michel. Each leaders confirmed their dedication to acknowledge one another’s territorial integrity and sovereignty in accordance with the UN constitution and the 1991 Alma Ata Declaration.

“There was an settlement by Armenia to facilitate a civilian EU mission alongside the border with Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan agreed to cooperate with this mission so far as it’s involved,” the council’s announcement reads.

The textual content explains that the civilian mission, which goals to “construct confidence” and “contribute to the border commissions” will probably be dispatched to Armenia’s border with Azerbaijan later this month, and final for a most of two months.

The battle stems from a decades-old territorial dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh area, located in Muslim-majority Azerbaijan however largely populated by ethnic Christian Armenians. Yerevan has been supporting the area’s independence ever because it sought to interrupt away from Bakus’s rule within the early Nineties.

Learn extra

Tensions between the 2 former Soviet republics erupted into an all-out battle in 2020 which lasted for 44 days, ending with a Russia-brokered ceasefire. Final month, nonetheless, preventing broke out once more as Armenia accused Azerbaijan of launching cross-border artillery and drone strikes. Baku insisted it was solely responding to “provocations” from Yerevan.

Over 200 folks have been killed within the preventing earlier than Baku “unilaterally” proposed a “humanitarian ceasefire,” stating it was not concerned about escalating or destabilizing the state of affairs any additional, whereas Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan referred to as on the CSTO for army help, claiming that Azerbaijani troops had seized elements of his nation’s territory.

The CSTO refused to ship its forces to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, insisting on resolving the problem utilizing political and diplomatic strategies. The bloc’s chief of joint employees, Normal Anatoly Sidorov, acknowledged that any additional choices could be based mostly on the outcomes of a joint mission despatched by the group to Armenia.