Tbilisi - (AFP) - The Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held direct bilateral talks, the first between them since the war that broke out in the year 2020 between the two countries to control the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The talks in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, complement an agreement between the two Caucasus countries brokered by the European Union in May to "advance talks" on a peace agreement.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the diplomats "discussed a wide range of issues related to the normalization of relations between the two countries."

During the meeting, Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan stressed "the importance of a political solution to the Karabakh conflict in order to build lasting peace in the region."

The meeting between the Armenian Foreign Minister and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Jihon Bayramov, took place in a tense atmosphere, against the background of mutual accusations between the defense ministers of the two countries, in which each held the other responsible for cross-border shooting from Friday night to Saturday.

After a first war in the 1990s, Armenia and Azerbaijan confronted in the fall of 2020 to control the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which split from Azerbaijan with the support of Yerevan.

The last war resulted in the death of about 6,500 people and ended with a truce brokered by Russia.

As part of the armistice agreement, Armenia ceded large swathes of the territory it once controlled, and Russia deployed a peacekeeping force of around 2,000 military personnel tasked with monitoring compliance with the shaky truce.

In Armenia, this agreement was considered a national humiliation, and several opposition parties have organized demonstrations since mid-April against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who is accused of wanting to cede more lands to Baku.

But since it invaded Ukraine in an operation it launched on February 24, Moscow has grown increasingly isolated internationally and is no longer the main mediator in the conflict.

Since then, the European Union has been leading the process of normalization between the two countries, which includes engaging in peace talks, demarcating borders, and reopening communications between them.

The Armenian Prime Minister and the Azerbaijani President met in April and May in Brussels to discuss a peace agreement mediated by the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, who announced that the next meeting would take place in July or August.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous region, and an Armenian majority supported by Yerevan declared its secession from Azerbaijan upon the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, which led to the outbreak of a first war in the 1990s that killed 30,000 people and displaced thousands of Azerbaijanis.