Armenia and Azerbaijan yesterday blamed each other for gunfire along their restive border, days ahead of EU-hosted talks aimed at resolving their three-decade territorial dispute.
The leaders of the two countries are due to hold talks in Brussels tomorrow, as part of a push to normalize relations between the two neighbors in the Caucasus.
The EU-hosted meeting comes after the US said that “tangible progress” had been made at talks between foreign ministers in Washington last week aimed at ending the dispute over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Photo: EPA-EFE / VLADIMIR SMIRNOV / SPUTNIK / KREMLIN
However, the two sides yesterday accused each other of shooting along their border.
“Azerbaijani forces are shooting artillery and mortars at Armenian position in the Sotk region” in the east, the Armenian Ministry of Defense said in a statement, adding that three of its soldiers had been wounded.
The Azerbaijani Ministry of Defense said that “the Armenian side has once again violated the ceasefire agreement” with “large-caliber weapons” that wounded one Azerbaijani soldier and the mortar fire was continuing.
The incident came just days before European Council President Charles Michel is to host Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani Prime Minister Ilham Aliyev for talks in Brussels.
The two leaders had also agreed to meet together with the leaders of France and Germany on the sidelines of a European summit in Moldova on June 1, the EU said.
Majority-Christian Armenia and Azerbaijan, whose population is mostly Muslim, were republics of the Soviet Union that gained independence in 1991, when the union broke up.
They have gone to war twice over disputed territories, mainly Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region inside Azerbaijan.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in two wars over the region, one lasting six years and ending in 1994, and the second in 2020, which ended in a Russian-negotiated ceasefire deal.
However, clashes have broken out regularly since then.
The Western mediation efforts to resolve the conflict come as major regional power Russia has struggled to maintain its decisive influence due to the fallout from its war on Ukraine.
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