Last week, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed to a ceasefire putting an end to two days of violence linked to a decades-old dispute over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh between the former Soviet states.
What Antony Blinken said?
The State Department said that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Monday in New York. This marked the first direct talks between both sides since deadly border clashes this month.
The fighting, which each side blamed on the other, left more than 170 soldiers dead and threatened to pull Turkey, a key backer of Azerbaijan, and Armenia ally Russia into a wider conflict at the same time as the already existing high geopolitical tensions.
Convening Armenia’s Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijan’s Jeyhun Bayramov in the United Nations General Assembly, Blinken emphasized the need to prevent further fighting and return to the peace process, Ned Price said in a statement.
Price said that they discussed the next steps and both sides were encouraged by the Secretary to meet again before the end of the month. see When India forged connections with Russia as a result of the United States’ inability to do so previously: Blinken .
