Azerbaijan leader calls for further Karabakh talks
By Sevinzh Abdullayeva and Viktor Shulman

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 2, 2004 Thursday 7:22 AM Eastern Time

NAKHICHEVAN /Azerbaijan/, September 2 – Azerbaijan President Ilkham
Aliyev said it was necessary to continue talks over settling the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Aliyev said so as he spoke with reporters in Nakhichevan, an autonomous
republic in southwestern Azerbaijan which borders on Armenia.

“If I have not rejected negotiations yet, it means I’m hoping that
they will yield a result,” he said.

He emphasized that he had repeatedly stated that he “was not going
to take part in the talks merely for the sake of imitating them.”

“If I see at some point that the negotiations are ineffective and
I don’t believe in their future, Azerbaijan will be the first to
withdraw from the negotiating process; but at present, they are
needed,” the president said.

“Negotiations run around concrete topics,” he said expressing the
hope that they would yield results.