'We will never abandon Armenians,' says France's Macron

ANKARA

After a meeting with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia on Wednesday night in Brussels, the French president said "we will never abandon the Armenians."

Following his discussion with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “We will never abandon the Armenians. We will always seek solutions for lasting peace.”

Pashinyan and Aliyev were in the EU capital to attend the bloc's Eastern Partnership Summit, which brought together the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, the 27 EU heads of state and government, and their counterparts from the Eastern Partnership countries, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine.

Relations between the former Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been tense since 1991 over the border regions of Nagorno Karabakh, which were liberated by the Azerbaijani army in a 44-day war that ended in November 2020 with a Russian-brokered cease-fire.

Since then, efforts have been made to normalize relations between the two neighboring countries.

Last month, Aliyev and Pashinyan met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia. Following the meeting, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia expressed their readiness to start the process of demarcation and delimitation of their contested border.