DIPLOMATS PUSH ARMENIA AND AZERBAIJAN ON SETTLEMENT OF DISPUTED TERRITORY
International Herald Tribune
The Associated Press
Nov 29 2007
France
WASHINGTON: Diplomats from the United States, Russia and France on
Thursday urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to agree to a set of principles
for a settlement on control of disputed territory, the U.S. State
Department said in a statement.
At a meeting in Madrid, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns,
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner presented a document of conditions for future
negotiations on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to the two countries’
foreign ministers.
U.S. officials have said talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the
basic principles for negotiating a settlement have stalled on a few
remaining points.
"The joint proposal that was transmitted today to the parties offered
just and constructive solutions to these last remaining differences,"
the State Department said in a statement.
In Thursday’s meeting, the three diplomats urged the two sides
to accept the document as a starting point for talks on a final
settlement.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic
Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year conflict
that killed some 30,000 people and drove more than 1 million from
their homes.