Azerbaijan has invited Armenia to the Cop29 climate summit, a senior Azerbaijani official said on Sunday.
Hikmet Hajiyev, foreign policy adviser to Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, told reporters an invitation had been extended to the country.
It comes amid an intermittent peace process to try to end a decades-long conflict between the two and when they still do not have formal diplomatic relations.
The climate talks take place in Azerbaijan’s capital, Baku, from November 11 to 22.
“I’m saying … this for the first time to international media,” Mr Hajiyev said at the 2nd Shusha Global Media Forum.
“The [Cop29 president-designate Mukhtar Babayev] … has sent a letter of invitation to the minister of foreign affairs of Armenia. We have sent a formal invitation.”
Mr Hajiyev said sending this letter when both countries did not have formal diplomatic relations gives an “illustration” of the “good will” of Azerbaijan and its “inclusive approach”.
Mr Hajiyev said Cop was a global endeavour and the crucial talks went beyond “beyond Armenia and Azerbaijan”. He said he did not know if a presidential contact would resolve the impasse but stated Cop is “about everybody”.
“Now it is the time of the government of Armenia to decide.”
Azerbaijan were only selected as hosts last year after months of political wrangling and were resolved partially after Armenia dropped its objection to Azerbaijan as hosts.
Tensions continue between both countries, however, despite peace talks over the decades-long conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
An Azerbaijan offensive in 2023 retook Karabakh prompting the exodus of more than 100,000 Armenians.
Any peace deal seeks to formalise the border between the two countries
Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has in the past few week been outlining more of its plans for the crucial climate talks.
The fossil fuel-rich state on the Caspian Sea launched a $1bn fund last Friday that is to be capitalised by contributions from the fossil fuel industry and aiming to support climate projects in developing countries.
The Cop29 presidency also launched the “Cop truce appeal” that aims to promote peace, dialogue and reconciliation more broadly.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.