Armenia will withdraw from four towns bordering Azerbaijan

The governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan reached an agreement on Friday that provides for Armenia’s withdrawal from four Azerbaijani towns on the border between the two countries. Armenia had controlled them since the 1990s and the agreement for their return is significant because it is a step forward towards the start of peace talks between the two countries, which have been in conflict for decades, especially over the control of Nagorno Karabakh, a separatist territory located in Azerbaijan but until a few months inhabited mainly by ethnic Armenian people.

Last September, the Azerbaijani army militarily attacked Nagorno Karabakh, forcing the local authorities to surrender and pushing tens of thousands of ethnic Armenian people towards Armenia. In December the two sides said they would start peace talks, but no great progress was made, on the contrary: the two countries continued to accuse each other of sabotaging the diplomatic process and there were clashes and attacks in several disputed areas on the border.

The four towns on which an agreement was found are Baghanis Ayrum, Asagi Eskipara, Heyrimli and Kizilhacili: they are located in the Gazakh region, in the north-eastern part of the border between the two countries, and were occupied by Armenia during the first war of Nagorno Karabakh, fought between 1988 and 1994.

The agreement for their return was reached during a meeting between the two deputy prime ministers of their respective countries Shahin Mustafayev (Azerbaijan) and Mher Grigoryan (Armenia), on the border between the two countries. Aykhan Hajizada, spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry, called the agreement “a long-awaited historic event.”

There are currently no details on when and how Armenia’s withdrawal should begin. The return of the four citizens to Azerbaijan had been at the center of negotiations for weeks: the control of the disputed territories and the mutual recognition of the borders are among the main obstacles to reaching a permanent peace agreement between the two countries.

Last February, four Armenian soldiers were killed and one was wounded by the Azerbaijani army in a fighting position near the Armenian town of Nerkin Hand, on the border with Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani border military force had said that it was a “revenge operation” in response to a “provocation” that the Armenian forces had carried out the day before.

The peace talks that should be started between the two countries also concern the release of prisoners arrested during the latest clashes in Nagorno Karabakh: again on Friday the family of one of them, the former Armenian official Ruben Vardanyan, said that he is leading been on hunger strike for two weeks. Vardanyan is detained and currently awaiting trial.

– Listen also: The episode of Globo, the Post’s foreign podcast, on Nagorno Karabakh