Next Armenia, Azerbaijan Foreign Ministers' Meeting to Be Held in September

The next meeting between foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will be held in September in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, the Armenian Foreign ministry said in a statement following the end of the ministers’ meeting held in Brussels.

YEREVAN (Sputnik) – During the Tuesday meeting in Brussels Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and his Azerbaijan’s counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov discussed the peace settlement in Azerbaijan’s split region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

“An agreement was reached to convene the next meeting between the [Foreign] Ministers in September in New York in the margins of the General Assembly of the United Nations,” the statement said on Tuesday.

“Edward Nalbandian underscored the importance of stabilization of the situation on the Line of Contact and in this regard emphasized the necessity to implement the agreements, reached during the Vienna and St. Petersburg Summits,” the statement said.

The meeting was also attended by co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk group on Karabakh settlement.

“The Co-Chairs asked the Ministers to convey to the Presidents their proposal on organizing a Summit in the course of this year,” the statement added.

Azerbaijan's Armenian-dominated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed its independence in 1991. After the military conflict ended in 1994, Azerbaijan lost control over the region.

Violence erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh on April 2, 2016, and led to multiple casualties. The parties to the conflict signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire three days later, but mutual accusations have not stopped so far.

On May 16, 2016, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev met in Vienna to discuss the conflict. The sides reiterated there can be no military solution to the conflict and reaffirmed their commitment to 1994 and 1995 peace agreements. The presidents also agreed to finalize the OSCE investigative mechanism as soon as possible to reduce the risk of further violence.

On June 20, 2016, the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia met in St. Petersburg where they reaffirmed their commitment to achieve steady progress in political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and agreed to increase the number of OSCE monitors working in the conflict zone.

Despite the achieved agreements a new outbreak of violence erupted last week when Azerbaijan's Defense Ministry said that the Azerbaijani village of Alkhanli was shelled, which resulted in the deaths of two people as well as the civil property damage. The unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh republic’s Ministry of Defense pointed out that its forces opened retaliatory fire against Azerbaijan's multiple rocket launcher firing positions, and put all the blame on Baku.