Baku, Yerevan to hold peace talks in Almaty on May 10

BAKU

Azerbaijani and Armenian top diplomats are set to convene in the Kazakh city of Almaty on May 10 to engage in negotiations to craft a peace agreement and detail border demarcation works as part of normalization efforts between the arch foes, who had been locked in a decades-long territorial conflict.

"In accordance with the previously reached consensus,” Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan will conduct discussions in Almaty on May 10, said Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ayhan Hacızade.

On May 1, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev welcomed the agreement reached by the parties to hold the foreign ministers' negotiations on the preparation of a peace agreement in Kazakhstan. 

During his official visit to Yerevan on April 15, Tokayev affirmed support for the conclusion of a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan, noting that his country stands ready to undertake a goodwill mission in this regard.

Bayramov and Mirzoyan last met on Feb. 28 in Berlin, hosted by German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

Last month, Baku and Yerevan announced they had started border demarcation work.

Azerbaijan said expert groups were conducting "clarification of coordinates based on geodesic study of the terrain.”

Yerevan, meanwhile, ruled out "the transfer of any parts of Armenia's sovereign territory" to Azerbaijan as a result of the delimitation.

Last autumn, Azerbaijani troops recaptured the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Armenian separatists in a lightning offensive that effectively ended a bloody three-decade standoff between the Caucasus neighbors over control of the mountainous region.