EGN NEWS DESK
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 two neighboring nations have fought a sequence of conflicts in recent times, each over Azerbaijan’s breakaway area of Nagorno-Karabakh and inside Armenia’s internationally acknowledged borders.
In the aftermath of a 2022 warfare, an EU monitoring mission has been deployed in Armenia to watch the tense state of affairs on the border, and the nation has pushed for the withdrawal of Russian border guards stationed there for the reason that fall of the Soviet Union.
Speaking to 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 ample for the withdrawal of the EU contingent.” The nation has constantly opposed Brussels’ mission, arguing that it will increase the danger of battle.
Last September, Azerbaijan launched an offensive to retake Nagorno-Karabakh, which had been managed by its ethnic Armenian inhabitants since a warfare that adopted the collapse of the USSR. W`ith Russian peacekeepers standing apart, just about the entire mountainous area’s 100,000 residents had been compelled to flee to Armenia.
While the EU has strengthened political ties with Armenia in recent times because the nation pivots away from Moscow’s sphere of affect, Brussels additionally maintains shut relations with Azerbaijan. In 2022, European Commission 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 power.
