The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed in a meeting in Brussels Sunday to "advance discussions" on a peace treaty for the Karabakh region that witnessed a war in 2020, the European Council's president said.

European Council President Charles Michel held bilateral talks with both Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan before they had a trilateral at which Karabakh was discussed.

"The leaders agreed to advance discussions on the future peace treaty governing interstate relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan," Michel said in a statement after the meeting, adding that foreign ministers will meet "in the coming weeks."

A commission on border delimitation and border security will start work in "the coming days," with Aliyev and Pashinyan agreeing also on the need to proceed with unblocking transport links between the two countries. The leaders also agreed that transport links needed to be unblocked.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan have been tense since 1991 when the Armenian military occupied Karabakh, a territory internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan, and seven adjacent regions.

Clashes erupted on Sept. 27, 2020, with the Armenian army attacking civilians and Azerbaijani forces and violating several humanitarian cease-fire agreements.

During the 44-day conflict, Azerbaijan liberated several cities and around 300 settlements and villages that had been occupied by Armenia for almost 30 years.

The fighting ended with a Russian-brokered agreement on Nov. 10, 2020, which was seen as a victory for Azerbaijan and a defeat for Armenia.

In January 2021, the leaders of Russia, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a pact to develop economic ties and infrastructure to benefit the entire region. It also included the establishment of a trilateral working group in Karabakh.

After the conflict ended, Azerbaijan launched a massive reconstruction initiative in the liberated Karabakh region.

Demonstrations have erupted in the Armenian capital Yerevan in recent weeks to protest Pashinyan's handling of the conflict, as he embarked last month on peace talks with Aliyev.

Pashinyan – currently facing pressure to resign – spoke about "preparations for the negotiation process of normalization of relations between the two countries, humanitarian issues, as well as the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict," said a statement from his office.

Aliyev's office said the president "expressed his hope that the process of drafting the peace agreement between the two countries would be accelerated."

"Aliyev noted that Azerbaijan had submitted five principles based on international law to normalize relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan and sign a peace agreement, emphasizing that these principles played a key role in drafting the peace agreement," the statement said.

It further said that Aliyev also stressed the importance of clarifying the problem of landmines in liberated territories and the fate of about 4,000 people missing in the First Karabakh War.

Another EU-arranged meeting between Aliyev and Pashinyan is set for July or August, Michel said.

Trilateral meeting in Shusha

Meanwhile, the seventh trilateral meeting between the Turkish, Azerbaijani and Georgian parliaments’ foreign affairs committees was held in Azerbaijan’s liberated Shusha province on Sunday.

After visiting the Turkish and Azerbaijani martyrdoms in Baku on Saturday, the parliamentary delegations headed by the President of the International Relations Committee of the Azerbaijan Milli Majlis Samet Seyidov, the Chairperson of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey Akif Çağatay Kılıç and the Head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Georgian Parliament Nikolos Samkharadze, on Sunday met in the cultural capital of Azerbaijan, the symbol of Karabakh, Shusha.

"Azerbaijan is trying to normalize its relations with Armenia after liberating its lands from occupation. We must unite our efforts to secure our future. Parliaments and their representatives should also work for the future as representatives of their peoples," Kılıç said during his speech.

He added that Turkey supports Azerbaijan and believes that relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan will soon normalize in the region while he believes that lasting peace and stability will be established.

Seyidov for his part said that several historical and cultural monuments of Azerbaijan, as well as cities, were destroyed during the times of Armenian occupation and added that Azerbaijan has started a comprehensive reconstruction policy in the liberated lands.

He said he believed a peace treaty between Baku and Yerevan would soon be signed.

Stating that friendship groups operating in parliaments and cooperation in international parliamentary organizations have a special role in the development of relations between the three countries, Samkharadze talked about the energy and transportation projects carried out by the three countries as Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan, Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum, Baku-Tbilisi-Kars.