AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA VOW TO CONTINUE TALKS
Aida Sultanova
Washington post
June 14 2006
BAKU, Azerbaijan – Azerbaijan and Armenia promised Wednesday to
continue talks over Nagorno-Karabakh despite two failed efforts this
year by the Caucasus nations’ presidents to resolve the status of
the disputed enclave.
The two countries’ foreign ministers, along with international
mediators, met in Paris for four hours of talks Tuesday, a week after
their presidents, Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan and Robert Kocharian of
Armenia, met in Romania on the sidelines of a Black Sea summit.
Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said in televised comments that
Tuesday’s meeting was "as always, tense and intensive. … In any
case, the process will continue. The next step will be determined in
the near future."
Russian and French mediators from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe’s so-called Minsk group also attended Tuesday’s
meeting.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but populated mostly by ethnic
Armenians, who have run it and seven contiguous districts since an
uneasy 1994 cease-fire ended six years of full-scale war. Sporadic
border clashes regularly break out.