Macron Says France Ready to Help Building Lasting Solution to Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

PARIS — With a Russia-brokered truce between Armenia and Azerbaijan continuing to hold in Nagorno-Karabakh, French President Emmanuel Macron says he is ready to help build a lasting and balanced solution for all sides in the conflict.

The peace deal, announced early on November 10, came after Azerbaijani forces made major battlefield gains in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Three previous cease-fires signed since fighting broke out again on September 27 had failed to hold.

The deal includes the deployment of 2,000 Russian peacekeepers in the region.

France, part of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) — co-chaired by Russia, France, and the United States — has found itself somewhat sidelined by Moscow’s efforts in the conflict.

While Macron has been careful not to back one side or the other in the dispute, he also has to be wary with some 400,000 to 600,000 people of Armenian origin living in France.

“The President expressed his satisfaction with the end of the fighting, recalled his friendship for Armenia and its people as well as his readiness to build a fair, lasting and acceptable political solution for all parties in Nagorno-Karabakh,” the French presidency said in a statement detailing a call with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan late on November 12.