Draft deal to end bitter decades-long conflict agreed 4 months ago, but timeline for sealing it remains uncertain.The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan are holding peace talks in the United Arab Emirates after nearly four decades of conflict.
The meeting in Abu Dhabi on Thursday between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, confirmed by both their governments, comes after the two countries finalised a draft peace deal in March.
The South Caucasus countries have fought a series of wars since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan that had a mostly ethnic-Armenian population at the time, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia.
Peace talks began after Azerbaijan recaptured Karabakh in a lightning offensive in September 2023, prompting a huge exodus of almost all of the territory’s 100,000 Armenians, who fled to Armenia.
But the timeline for sealing a deal remains uncertain.
Ceasefire violations along the heavily militarised 1,000km (620-mile) shared border surged soon after the draft deal was announced, though there have been no reported violations recently.
In a potential stumbling block to a deal, Azerbaijan has said it wants Armenia to change its constitution, which it says makes implicit claims to Azerbaijani territory.
Yerevan denies this, but Pashinyan has repeatedly stressed in recent months – most recently this week – that the South Caucasus country’s founding charter needs to be updated.
Azerbaijan also asked for a transport corridor through Armenia, linking the …