Foreign ministers from Iran, Turkey and Russia will meet their counterparts from Azerbaijan and Armenia in Tehran on Monday and discuss progress towards a peace agreement between the two South Caucasus neighbours, Iranian and Russian state media said.
The first meeting of foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan after the September lightning offensive by Azeri forces in Nagorno-Karabakh will also take place amid rising tensions in the Middle East.
IRNA news agency quoted the foreign ministry as saying the countries wanted to talk about regional issues "without the interference of non-regional and Western countries".
That was an implicit reference to the United States and the European Union, whose involvement in the search for a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan has particularly annoyed Moscow.
Russia's Interfax news agency said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would travel to Tehran for the meeting.
Since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has sought to firm up military and diplomatic ties with countries outside the traditional West. Lavrov has met his Iranian counterpart several times since.
Russia regards itself as the security guarantor between Azerbaijan and Armenia, but the demands and distractions of its war in Ukraine have led to a weakening of its influence.
Azerbaijan last month staged a lightning offensive to regain control of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh where ethnic Armenians had enjoyed de facto independence since breaking away in the 1990s.
India’s economy will become carbon neutral by the year 2070, the country’s prime minster has announced at the COP26 climate crisis summit in Glasgow. The target date is two decades beyond what scientists say is needed to avert catastrophic climate impacts. India is the last of the world’s major carbon polluters to announce a net-zero target, with China saying it would reach that goal in 2060, and the United States and the European Union aiming for 2050.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
China's carbon emissions are vast and growing, dwarfing those of other countries. Experts agree that without big reductions in China's emissions, the world cannot win the fight against climate change. In 2020, China's President Xi Jinping said his country would aim for its emissions to reach their highest point before 2030 and for carbon neutrality before 2060. His statement has now been confirmed as China's official position ahead of the COP26 global climate summit in Glasgow. But China has not said exactly how these goals will be achieved.
A crucial U.N. conference heard calls on its first day for the world's major economies to keep their promises of financial help to address the climate crisis, while big polluters India and Brazil made new commitments to cut emissions. World leaders, environmental experts and activists all pleaded for decisive action to halt the global warming which threatens the future of the planet at the start of the two-week COP26 summit in the Scottish city of Glasgow on Monday. The task facing negotiators was made even more daunting by the failure of the Group of 20 major industrial nations to agree ambitious new commitments at the weekend.