Brussels still hopes it can broker solution to Azerbaijan-Armenia tensions

Tom de Waal, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Europe think tank, has said Brussels is still holding out hope it can broker a solution to the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia - one of the world's most protracted disputes.

He made the remarks in an interview with Politico.

“The EU is making approaches to both sides to try and restart the peace process. From the outside, it looks menacing, but when you speak to people on the inside there’s still hope that we haven’t run out of the road just yet,” he said.

But if that effort collapses, he warned “there could be growing calls for sanctions on Azerbaijan from Western countries - which could spell trouble for the EU's effort to use Azerbaijan as an alternative for Russian fossil fuels”, Politico writes.

However, the website notes that efforts by Brussels to calm Armenia-Azerbaijan tensions are falling short.

Last month, European Council President Charles Michel held calls with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss the situation on the ground and “stress the EU’s readiness to help advance … peace and stability in the region”. However, just hours later, Azerbaijan confirmed… effective control over a road used by the Armenians to bring in weapons.

Speaking about the arrival of the EU mission in the region to Politico, Vaqif Sadıqov, the head of Azerbaijan’s mission to the EU, told POLITICO that the presence of the monitors near the border with Azerbaijan is worrying Baku.

“This is a bilateral issue between Armenia and the EU, but it is happening a few hundred metres from our own border posts and in a heavily militarised environment where we have Russian border guards, Armenian border guards, Russian regular units, Armenian regular units and, closer to the Iranian border, Iran’s military. Now we also have EU peacekeepers. So we have legitimate security questions," he said.

Sadıqov warned the mission could be seen as an effort by Brussels to bolster its presence in the region.