Azerbaijan on Friday called off peace talks next month in Brussels over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh after adversary Armenia demanded that French President Emmanuel Macron mediate.

The two countries in the Caucasus have fought two wars — first in the early 1990s and again in 2020 — over the disputed territory, which is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but largely controlled by ethnic Armenians.

While Russia has previously stepped in to broker a peace, when fighting flared again this September, the EU and US helped bring about a fresh truce.

What did Azerbaijan say about Macron?

Azeri President Ilham Aliyev told an international conference in Baku that his Armenian counterpart Nikol Pashinyan had agreed to talks on December 7 in Brussels "only on condition" that Macron takes part.

"That means the meeting will not take place," he added.

Macron and European Council President Charles Michel were present at talks between the two warring sides in Prague last month and Armenia said Friday it wanted the next round to have the "same" format.

 

Aliyev said Macron had "attacked" and "insulted" the Azeri government and should not act as a go-between. He also accused the Armenian side of attempting to "scupper" the talks.

Azerbaijan has previously accused France of backing Armenia in the conflict after Macron said last month that the Azeri side had launched a "terrible war, with many deaths, atrocious scenes."

The French president has also affirmed his support for Armenia's sovereignty in phone calls with Pashinyan.

Responding to Aliyev's comments, a spokesperson from Armenia's foreign ministry said they had "nothing to do with reality," the Interfax news agency reported.

Moscow sidelined by EU peace plans

Russia has previously played a key role in peace deals over Nagorno-Karabakh that followed several rounds of talks in the Russian Black Sea resort town of Sochi.

Under the Moscow-mediated deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades and Russia agreed to deploy a force of around 2,000 Russian soldiers on a peacekeeping mission to oversee the fragile truce. However, due to Moscow's isolation over the war in Ukraine, whenfighting flared in September, Brussels and Washington took the lead in brokering new peace talks.

Last month, the warring parties agreed to allow a civilian EU mission to be set up on their border.

Both Armenia and Azerbaijan are former Soviet states, and while the former is a key ally of Russia, the Kremlin is also keen not to weaken ties with the latter.

Moscow has so far resisted calls to deploy forces to help Yerevan under a mutual defense pact.

No plans for fresh talks in Moscow

On Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Russia was "continuing its work on facilitating" talks between the two sides but said there was no concrete plan for the two leaders to meet in Moscow.

Last month, Russian President Putin's foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov criticized EU and US attempts "to wedge themselves in our work."

The Kremlin sees the Caucasus region, between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, as its sphere of influence.

The first conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh broke out during the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, resulting in the death of approximately 30,000 people.

The six-week war in 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 troops.

mm/xx (AFP, Reuters)