Foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to discuss
Karabakh conflict in Moscow

.c The Associated Press

MOSCOW (AP) – The foreign ministers of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan
were slated to meet in Moscow on Wednesday for discussions of the
conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and a planned meeting this
week between the two Caucasus nations’ presidents, the Interfax news
agency reported.

“Negotiations have intensified noticeably over the past six months,”
Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov was quoted as saying
Tuesday, referring to talks on Nagorno-Karabakh that have been
mediated by Russia, the United States and France.

The bloodshed 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 repeatedly failed.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian and his Azerbaijani counterpart
Ilham Aliev are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of a summit of the
Commonwealth of Independent States in Russia’s Volga River city of
Kazan on Friday, Interfax said.

08/24/05 02:26 EDT