Azerbaijan's Foreign Ministry said late on Sunday that it proposed moving up scheduled talks with Armenia to October from November to address border delimitation problems that are vital to prevent any further conflicts between the two countries.
On Sunday, the foreign ministers from Azerbaijan and Armenia met in Geneva, after the worst fighting between the two ex-Soviet countries since 2020 killed more than 200 in late September.
"During the meeting, Azerbaijan proposed to hold the next meeting of the bilateral commission on delimitation in October, not in November, as previously agreed, taking into account the tension on the non-delimited border," the ministry said in a statement on its website.
Armenia's Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov met to begin "drafting the text of the peace treaty," the Foreign Ministry in Baku said Monday.
It said the talks followed up the EU-mediated meeting on Aug. 31 in Brussels between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian.
Azerbaijan called for "full withdrawal of the Armenian armed units from the territories of Azerbaijan, and the opening of transport and communication lines," the ministry said in a statement.
Armenia's Foreign Ministry said, "The parties exchanged ideas on the peace treaty, ensuring the rights and security guarantees of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh."
It reaffirmed its demands of Azerbaijani troops' "withdrawal from the sovereign territory of Armenia," the release of POWs and "the introduction of international mechanisms for controlling the situation on the border."
Last month, at least 286 people were killed on both sides before a U.S.-brokered truce ended the worst clashes since the Caucasus neighbors’ 2020 war.
Baku and Yerevan fought two wars – in 2020 and in the 1990s – over the region of Karabakh, internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory that had been illegally occupied by Armenia.
The six-week war in 2020 claimed the lives of more than 6,500 troops from both sides and ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had occupied for decades, and Moscow deployed about 2,000 Russian peacekeepers to oversee the fragile truce.
With Moscow increasingly isolated on the world stage following its February invasion of Ukraine, the United States and the European Union had taken a leading role in mediating the Armenia-Azerbaijan normalization process.
Relations between the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military illegally occupied Karabakh and seven adjacent regions – Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Qubadli and Zangilan.
Large-scale clashes erupted in the Karabakh region on Sept. 27, 2020, when the Armenian Army launched attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani forces, violating several humanitarian cease-fire agreements.
Azerbaijan then launched a counteroffensive operation, later dubbed "Iron Fist," which led to the 44-day conflict ending with the liberation of Azerbaijani lands from the occupation of the Armenian forces. The fighting ended with a deal brokered by Russia.