ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN MAKE PROGRESS ON KARABAKH – MEDIATOR

NASDAQ
May 7 2009

PRAGUE (AFP)–The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan made "important
and significant progress" in talks on the disputed Nagorno Karabakh
region on Thursday, international mediators said.

Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart
Ilham Aliyev met for talks ahead of the European Union’s Eastern
Partnership summit in Prague, under supervision from the Minsk Group
of international mediators.

"There is an important and significant progress, some parts of the
negotiations were basically agreed on," Matthew Bryza, U.S. deputy
assistant secretary of state and co-chairman of the group, told
reporters.

"They had a constructive discussion, they were able in finding basic
principles to reduce their differences (…) they generally agreed
on the basic ideas that they came here to discuss today," he added.

Bernard Fassier, the group’s French co-chairman, said the negotiators
had to " finalize the details" with foreign ministers ahead of the
next meeting.

That is expected to take place on the fringes of a business forum in
St. Petersburg in early June.

"We have a huge work ahead in the coming days and weeks," he added.

Backed by Armenia, ethnic Armenian separatists seized control of
Nagorno Karabakh in the early 1990s in a war that killed nearly 30,000
people and forced two million to flee their homes.

A ceasefire was signed between the two former Soviet republics in
1994 but the dispute remains unresolved.