‘GOOD BASIS’ FOR SOLVING ARMENIA CONFLICT: AZERBAIJAN PRESIDENT
Agence France Presse — English
September 16, 2008 Tuesday 12:06 PM GMT
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday said there was "a good
basis" for resolving a long-running conflict with Armenia after talks
with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev near Moscow.
"It seems to us that there is now a good basis for a resolution of
the conflict, which would fit with the interests of all states and
would be based on the principles of international law," Aliyev said.
"If the conflict is resolved in the near future, I am sure that there
will be new perspectives for regional cooperation," Aliyev said.
Aliyev also expressed his concern over the situation in the region
following Russia’s war in Georgia, saying that conflict "should be
resolved in a peaceful way, through dialogue, by finding common points
and based on mutual respect."
Aliyev visited Medvedev at his residence near Moscow for talks on
last month’s conflict in Georgia and on Azerbaijan’s conflict with
its neighbour Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorny-Karabakh.
Armenia and Azerbaijan remain in a tense stand-off over the enclave,
which ethnic Armenian forces seized in the early 1990s in a war that
killed nearly 30,000 people and forced another million on both sides
to flee their homes.
A ceasefire was signed between the two former Soviet republics in
1994 but the dispute remains unresolved after more than a decade of
negotiations, and shootings between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces
in the region are common.