Agence France Presse
May 7 2009
Armenian, Azeri heads make progress on Karabakh: mediator
PRAGUE, May 7 2009
The leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan made "important and significant
progress" in talks on the disputed Nagorny Karabakh region on
Thursday, international mediators said.
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azeri 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, US 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 "finalise 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
Nagorny 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.
France, Russia and the United States are co-chairs of the Minsk Group,
which is seeking to resolve the conflict.