The ministry said Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Jeyhun Bayramov reached the agreement in what was their second phone call in two weeks. The two sides will soon hold a “meeting regarding the commission” on border demarcation, it said without giving any dates.
According to the ministry’s readout of the phone call, Mirzoyan and Bayramov also discussed preparations for separate negotiations on an Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said, meanwhile, that he has already appointed Azerbaijani negotiators two will discuss the treaty and border demarcation with their Armenian counterparts.
It was not clear whether Yerevan has also named members of its two negotiating teams. The Armenian government could not be reached for comment.
Aliyev and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian first agreed to form such a commission during their trilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin last November. However, it was not set up in the following months not least because of confidence-building measures demanded by Yerevan.
Aliyev and Pashinian pledged to form the commission before the end of this month during their April 6 talks in Brussels hosted by European Council President Charles Michel. The latter said they also plan to “move rapidly” towards negotiating the peace treaty.
Russian responded by accusing the European Union and the United States of trying to hijack Russian efforts to broker peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan as part of the ongoing geopolitical standoff over Ukraine.
In a joint declaration issued after their April 19 talks, Pashinian and Russian President Vladimir Putin reaffirmed Moscow’s key role in the peace process. They said they will speed up the planned creation of the border demarcation commission.
“We are ready to provide advisory assistance to the bilateral Commission on border delimitation, to provide the necessary cartographic materials,” a senior Russian Foreign Ministry, Denis Gonchar, told the RIA Novosti news agency in an interview published on Monday.