Sharjah24 – AFP: The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan have held talks in Geneva on a future peace treaty, officials in Baku and Yerevan said Monday, following recent deadly clashes between the arch foes.
Last month, at least 286 people were killed from both sides before a US-brokered truce ended the worst clashes since the Caucasus neighbours' 2020 war.
Baku and Yerevan fought two wars -- in 2020 and in the 1990s -- over the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan.
Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov met on Sunday in Geneva to begin "drafting the text of the peace treaty," the foreign ministry in Baku said Monday.
It said the talks followed up the EU-mediated meeting on August 31 in Brussels between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
Azerbaijan called for "full withdrawal of the Armenian armed units from the territories of Azerbaijan, the opening of transport and communication lines," the ministry said in a statement.
Armenia's foreign ministry said "The parties exchanged ideas on the peace treaty, ensuring the rights and security guarantees of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh."
It reaffirmed its demands of Azerbaijani troops' "withdrawal from the sovereign territory of Armenia," release of POWs and "the introduction of international mechanisms for controlling the situation on the border."
The two foreign ministers last met for talks mediated by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on September 20 in New York.
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