Foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan see hopeful signs
on Nagorno-Karabakh

AP Worldstream; Aug 24, 2005

The foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan said Wednesday
that they saw hopeful signs recently in the drive to find a settlement
to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

“Now there is certain progress and we have chances to reach an
agreement on this issue,” the ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Azerbaijani
Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov as saying.

His Armenian counterpart Vartan Oskanyan stressed, “The people of
Nagorno-Karabakh should have the right to self-determination,”
ITAR-Tass reported.

“Other problems are to cope with the consequences of the conflict,
settle territorial claims and return refugees,” he added.

The three ministers met in Moscow on Wednesday, along with
representatives of the United States and France, which together with
Russia are mediating negotiations on settling the conflict.

They also discussed arrangements for a meeting Saturday between
Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliev on the sidelines of a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent
States in Russia’s Volga River city of Kazan.

The bloodshed in Nagorno-Karabakh began after the legislature of the
ethnic Armenian-dominated enclave in Azerbaijan called in 1988 for the
region to be incorporated into Armenia, which like Azerbaijan was then
still a Soviet republic. Full-scale military offensives broke out in
1991; thousands were killed and a million displaced.

A tense cease-fire has held since 1994 but efforts to finally resolve
Nagorno-Karabakh’s status have failed repeatedly.