The assertion comes a day after the 2 sides introduced {that a} deal on a joint border fee to demarcate and delimit their shared frontier had been signed. The 2 neighboring nations have fought a collection of conflicts lately, each over Azerbaijan’s breakaway area of Nagorno-Karabakh and inside Armenia’s internationally acknowledged borders.
Within the aftermath of a 2022 conflict, an EU monitoring mission has been deployed in Armenia to look at the tense scenario on the border, and the nation has pushed for the withdrawal of Russian border guards stationed there because the fall of the Soviet Union.
Chatting with POLITICO, Azerbaijani overseas coverage chief Hikmet Hajiyev confirmed that there had been progress in bilateral talks, including that the settlement on the border fee “needs to be seen as adequate for the withdrawal of the EU contingent.” The nation has persistently opposed Brussels’ mission, arguing that it will increase the danger of battle.
Final September, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been managed by its ethnic Armenian inhabitants since a conflict that adopted the collapse of the USSR. W`ith Russian peacekeepers standing apart, nearly the entire mountainous area’s 100,000 residents have been compelled to flee to Armenia.
Whereas the EU has strengthened political ties with Armenia lately because the nation pivots away from Moscow’s sphere of affect, Brussels additionally maintains shut relations with Azerbaijan. In 2022, European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen flew to Baku to signal a deal boosting fuel exports from the fossil fuel-rich nation as a part of efforts to diversify away from Russian vitality.