EC President: Preparations Underway for Meeting of Azerbaijan's Aliyev With Armenia's Pashinyan

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - European Council President Charles Michel said on Tuesday that preparations are in full swing for a meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan that is scheduled for August 31 in Brussels.

"Preparatory calls today in advance of tomorrow's fourth Brussels meeting with @azpresident and PM @NikolPashinyan," Michel tweeted.

In May, Michel held a trilateral meeting with Pashinyan and Aliyev in Brussels, during which the leaders agreed to establish the commission on delimitation and security of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. On May 24, the first meeting of Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Mher Grigoryan and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Shahin Mustafayev, took place at the Armenian-Azerbaijani interstate border in the format of a joint commission on border delimitation and security.

The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia flared up in Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2020, marking the most serious escalation of the decades-long conflict in years, with thousands of casualties left on both sides. The hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered trilateral declaration of ceasefire in November of that year. The parties agreed to the deployment of Russian peacekeepers to oversee the truce.