The Foreign Ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Russia, Türkiye, and Iran, met yesterday in Tehran. It is the first meeting of the ministers since the outbreak of fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Iran’s Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) quoted the Tehran Foreign Ministry as saying that the countries wanted to talk about regional issues “without the interference of non-regional and Western countries.”
The conflict has been going on for three decades. More than 100,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh. Russia currently has peacekeepers on the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
Also yesterday, in Tehran, as Interfax reported, Armenia and Iran signed a $214.6 million agreement on the construction of the 32 km Agarak-Kajaran highway in the Syunik region of Armenia on the border with Iran, as part of the North-South transport corridor. “The implementation of the project for the construction of the southern section of the North-South highway, implemented jointly with the Iranian side, will have a great impact on the economy of Armenia; in particular, a positive impact on GDP of about 0.4% is expected,” Armenian Minister of Economy Vahan Kerobyan told reporters.
