Itar-Tass, Russia
Aug 26 2005

Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents to hold direct talks on Karabakh

BAKU, August 26 (Itar-Tass) — Azerbaijan’s President Ilkham Aliyev
is leaving for Tatarstan’s capital Kazan on Friday morning for a
meeting of the CIS heads of state and celebrations on the occasion of
the city’s millennium, the presidential staff has said.

Within the framework of the CIS summit on August 27 another round of
direct talks will be held between the presidents of Azerbaijan and
Armenia on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

As he dwelt on Baku’s position at the talks over Karabakh, Ilkham
Aliyev in his latest interview to the mass media said `as long as
there is the hope for a peace settlement of the conflict, talks must
go on.’

He noted `certain progress’ achieved at the negotiations lately, but
added there were still no guarantees in sight, because large
differences still remained.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said about the August 24 talks on the
Karabakh issue between the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers
produced `encouraging signs may be built up from at the meeting of
Ilkham Aliyev and Robert Kocharian in Kazan.’

Diplomatic sources in Baku do not rule out that at the summit there
may be a meeting between Aliyev and his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor
Yushchenko. Cooperation in the oil and gas sphere will be the main
theme on the agenda.

A delegation of Ukraine’s oil and gas company Neftegaz Ukrainy
visited Baku early this week for talks with the state oil company and
Azerbaijan’s government on the possibility of Ukrainian specialists
taking part in the development of oil and gas fields and the
transportation of Caspian oil through the Odessa-Brody pipeline.