Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers agreed to expedite negotiation talks in a meeting in Washington, the U.S. State Department said Tuesday

"The foreign ministers agreed to expedite their negotiations," State Department spokesman Ned Price said of Monday's talks between Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov.

"Yesterday was positive in that the two sides met, they surfaced many of their areas of disagreement, at the end of the day they were able to agree on a joint statement. They were able to agree to continue meeting, engaging in direct dialogue and diplomacy in the weeks that follow."

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is linked to decades-old hostilities over control of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan but until 2020 largely controlled by the majority ethnic Armenian population.

In September, at least 286 people were killed on both sides before a U.S.-brokered truce ended the worst clashes since 2020 when simmering tensions escalated into all-out war.

It claimed more than 6,500 lives in six weeks before a Russian-brokered cease-fire saw Armenia cede swathes of territory it had controlled for decades.

Last month, Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian leaders agreed on a joint statement to continue to work on the normalization of ties between Baku and Yerevan, following a trilateral summit in the Russian resort town of Sochi.

With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its February offensive on Ukraine, the U.S. and the EU have taken a leading role in mediating the Armenia-Azerbaijan peace talks.

EU chief Charles Michel and French President Emmanuel Macron hosted talks between Pashinian and Aliyev in Brussels in August.

Following a slew of diplomatic efforts from Brussels and Washington, Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers met on Oct. 3 in Geneva to begin drafting the text of a future peace treaty.

Russia and EU leaders have traded criticism of their respective mediation efforts in the Karabakh conflict, with Moscow and Paris, in particular, exchanging jabs this month.

Putin recently dismissed a comment by Macron who said that Moscow was "destabilizing" a peace process between the two countries.

Moscow has traditionally acted as a middleman between the two countries, which were both part of the Soviet Union.