Armenia and Azerbaijan Foreign Ministers Held Talks in Geneva

Azerbaijan and Armenia foreign ministers met on Friday, October 30, in Geneva. Jeyhun Bayramov and Zohrab Mnatsakanyan held talks with the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group: Igor Popov represented Russia, Stefan Visconti represented France and Andrew Schafer the USA. According to the BBC, journalists were not allowed to cover the meeting. In particular, parties agreed they would not deliberately strike at civilian population or non-military targets and would exchange prisoners of war. The Geneva talks are the second personal Armenia and Azerbaijan foreign ministers’ meeting at the same table since the beginning of the war. The first one took place in Moscow on October 9-10, two weeks after the start of war over Nagorno-Karabakh. As Yerevan reported, fighting continued near Shusha and south of Lachin in the conflict zone on Friday - these are strategically important areas for each of the belligerent parties and the outcome of the war may depend on the outcome of hostilities in these areas. The Azerbaijani army has again attempted an offensive, Yerevan reported. The Azerbaijani media do not publish any front details. But Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev announced capturing nine more villages in three regions. These areas, as noted by the BBC, are already partially controlled by the Azerbaijani military. The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict escalated sharply on September 27. The parties have repeatedly agreed on a humanitarian truce but the ceasefire was not respected. Baku and Yerevan accused each other of violating it.