Pashinyan and Aliyev to meet in December

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are scheduled to meet on 15 December in Brussels on the margins of the EU Eastern Partnership Summit.

The meeting was arranged by the president of the European Council Charles Michel.

‘[Aliyev and Pashinyan] have agreed to meet in Brussels to discuss the regional situation and ways of overcoming tensions for a prosperous and stable South Caucasus’, a press release issued by the European Council on 19 November reads. 

The two leaders have also reportedly agreed to establish a direct line of communication between the countries’ respective Defence Ministries to serve as an ‘incident prevention mechanism’.

The agreement on the meeting was reached after deadly fighting on the Armenia-Azerbaijan border on 16 November. 

[Read more: POWs and issues of border demarcation after spike in Armenia-Azerbaijan violence]

Pashinyan and Aliyev were previously expected to hold a meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin ahead of the anniversary of the 9 November tripartite peace declaration that brought an end to the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.

Speaking on 9 November, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the meeting did not take place because of a lack of ‘clear agreements’. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said last week that ‘he is sure’ the meeting will take place, and that the leaders will come to an agreement.