The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan held their first bilateral talks since the 2020 war over the status of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
The three-hour talks were held in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, officials said on July 16, although few details of specific issues were released.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoian and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ceyhun Bayramov, "discussed a wide range of issues related to normalizing relations between the two countries."
“In this regard, the parties have discussed the progress of fulfilling previous commitments and have exchanged views on possible future steps."
The statement said that Mirzoian reiterated the position of the Armenian side that a political solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was important to bringing about a stable and sustainable peace in the region.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said Bayramov demanded "the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces from the territory of Azerbaijan," a reference to the portions of Nagorno-Karabakh that are still under Armenian control.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on July 15 had expressed hope that "the first bilateral meeting between the ministers...will bring in a result."
The foreign ministers had held a three-way meeting in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe, in May with the participation of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
Georgian Foreign Minister Elijah Darchiashvili welcomed the meeting of the two nations’ envoys in Tbilisi and said that he was “confident that our joint efforts to promote peace and stability in the region will yield results."
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought two wars -- in 2020 and in the 1990s -- over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The region, which had been under ethnic Armenian control for nearly three decades, is internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan.
Fighting in 2020 claimed more than 6,500 lives and ended with a Russian-brokered cease-fire pact.
Under the deal, Armenia ceded swathes of territory it had controlled for decades, and Russia deployed 2,000 peacekeepers to oversee the tense truce.
Armenia Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Aliyev held EU-brokered bilateral talks in Brussels in May to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh.
Pashinian has faced protests at home over opponents’ allegations that he was preparing to make what they saw as unacceptable concessions to Azerbaijan.