US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted on Monday the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers Ararat Mirzoyan and Jeyhun Bayramov at a second high-level meeting in less than five weeks chaired by him.
In light of the truce that the US brokered last September, Blinken praised the concrete steps taken by both Armenia and Azerbaijan to put the past behind and to work toward peace, stressing that the best way to a truly durable peace is the direct dialogue.
Before the meeting, Yerevan and Baku accused each other of breaking a fragile truce in Nagorno-Karabakh and the US State Secretary reiterated Washington’s commitment to peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan in a bid to elevate the role of the Biden administration as a mediator in the South Caucasus.
The conflict over the landlocked region of Nagorno-Karabakh dates back to 1991 – after the collapse of the Soviet Union – when Armenian separatists supported by Yerevan seized the area, initiating a war that killed nearly 30,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands from their homes.
Reiterating that Washington strongly supports the sovereignty and territorial independence of both Armenia and Azerbaijan, Blinken noted the tremendous toll that the 30-year conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region has taken.
However, according to Ryan Bohl, an analyst at the risk intelligence company Rane, Blinken’s increased focus on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is beyond the typical Biden agenda of stability and human rights and is also aimed at undercutting Russia, which is now focused on the war in Ukraine.
This meeting is also aimed at bolstering Washington’s reputation as a peace broker, though the US will rather lean on soft power rather than sending peacekeepers.
Before the war in Ukraine, Russia was a major power broker in the region, maintaining close ties with Yerevan which relies heavily on Russian support and military guarantees, and leading the Collective Security Treaty Organization military alliance of ex-Soviet countries.
