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Tensions have escalated between the two South Caucasus nations
over a two-month blockade of the Lachin corridor, the only land
route giving Armenia direct access to the disputed
Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The U.S. State Department said Blinken would meet Armenian Prime
Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev
at 1235 GMT. The politicians are attending the three-day Munich
Security Conference.
Armenia has sent Azerbaijan a draft proposal for a peace
settlement, Pashinyan said this week.
Nagorno-Karabakh is internationally recognised as part of
Azerbaijan, but its 120,000 inhabitants are predominantly ethnic
Armenians and it broke away from Baku in a first war in the
early 1990s.
Azeri civilians identifying themselves as environmental
activists have been facing off since Dec. 12 with Russian
peacekeepers on the Lachin corridor.
Yerevan says the protesters are government-backed agitators.
Baku denies blockading the road, saying that some convoys and
aid are allowed through.
Saturday's meeting would be the two leaders' first face-to-face
encounter since late October, when Russian President Vladimir
Putin hosted talks in the Black Sea city of Sochi. A Dec. 7
meeting in Brussels was scrapped.
(Reporting by Alexander Marrow in Moscow; editing by Jason
Neely)
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