ARMENIAN, AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENTS TO MEET AT CIS SUMMIT

Agence France Presse — English
November 22, 2006 Wednesday 9:07 PM GMT

Armenia’s President Robert Kocharyan will meet with his Azerbaijani
counterpart Ilham Aliyev next week in Minsk, on the sidelines of the
summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), OSCE officials
said Wednesday.

"I want to inform you that the Armenian president agreed to a meeting
with his Azerbaijani colleague in Minsk" on November 27-28, the
Russian co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group on the Karabakh conflict,
Yuri Merzlyakov, told reporters.

"This meeting was being prepared very meticulously and for a long
time. It will no doubt prove another step forward in resolving this
conflict, because this is a third such meeting this year, and there
never was such a full schedule," Merzlyakov said.

A source in the Azerbaijani presidential administration told AFP that
Aliyev also agreed to meet with Kocharyan.

Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a territorial dispute
over the Nagorny Karabakh ethnic-Armenian enclave since before the
break-up of the Soviet Union.

Azerbaijan lost control of the territory and seven surrounding regions
during a war in the early 1990s, but Karabakh’s status has yet to
be settled.