Leaders of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey hold separate talks on disputed region

13:43 2005-05-16
Pravda

Azeri President Ilham Aliev met with Armenian and Turkish leaders
at separate talks early Monday to discuss the disputed enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh, an official said.

Aliev first met with Armenian President Robert Kocharian, followed
by a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said
Council of Europe official Seyfi Tashan.

The meetings, which took place just past midnight Monday ahead of the
two-day Council of Europe summit, focused on the presence of Armenian
troops in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region inside Azerbaijan
that has been under the control of ethnic Armenians since the early
1990s, following fighting that killed an estimated 30,000 people.

A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave’s final political
status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently
between the two sides, which face off across a demilitarized buffer
zone.