This past week the Vatican’s Secretary of State, Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, quietly led his own “peace mission” to the Caucasus nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have long been engaged in violent conflict, to promote peace talks.
Azerbaijan
Armenian-American Leaders Urge Biden To Withhold Military Aid To Azerbaijan
Armenian leaders in the U.S. are calling on the federal government to cease military aid to Azerbaijan until it stops harassing Christians and destroying Christian sites in areas under its control. The persecution was supposed to have ended, the leaders say, with a 2020 ceasefire in a conflict between the two states.
Local Armenians Fear More Fighting Over Disputed Region
Members of the Armenian community in Brooklyn criticize a recent ceasefire agreement between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan in a decades-old dispute over the mountainous region called Nagorno-Karabakh. They said the deal brokered by Russia lets Azeris keep control over land they seized when fighting resumed n late September. They also worry that unresolved issues might cause warfare to start up again.