ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN AGREE TO MOVE FORWARD WITH KARABAKH TALKS

zerbaijan-agree-to-move-forward-with-karabakh-talk s/
Jun 4th, 2009

ST. PETERSBURG (RFE/RL)-Armenia and Azerbaijan reported further
progress towards the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
after a fresh meeting of their presidents held in Saint-Petersburg,
Russia on Thursday.

Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Ilham Aliyev spoke one on one for about
two and a half hours before and after being joined by their foreign
ministers and the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing
the OSCE Minsk Group. It was their fifth face-to-face encounter in
one year.

Neither president made any public statements after the
talks. Sarkisian’s office issued only a written statement saying that
the meeting took place "in a constructive atmosphere."

"The parties agreed to move forward in the negotiating process," the
statement said. It added that they instructed their top diplomats and
the mediators to continue their efforts to narrow Yerevan’s and Baku’s
disagreements and to prepare for yet another Armenian-Azerbaijani
summit.

"Although we cannot talk about a breakthrough or substantial
progress today, the parties are moving forward and have agreed
to continue negotiations," Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian told
journalists. Nalbandian’s Azerbaijani counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov,
gave a similarly positive assessment of the talks.

"What we heard today [from the presidents] is creating a basis for
the continuation of our work," Mammadyarov told RFE/RL’s Armenian
service. He said he believes that the Saint-Petersburg talks were
more productive than the previous Aliyev-Sarkisian meeting held in
Prague a month ago.

According to the mediators, during that meeting Aliyev and
Sarkisian bridged some of their differences on basic principles of a
Nagorno-Karabakh settlement proposed by the troika. The Minsk Group’s
U.S. co-chair, Matthew Bryza, has repeatedly spoken of "significant
progress" made in Prague.

Bryza told RFE/RL’s Armenian service last week that the Armenian and
Azerbaijani leaders are unlikely to iron out all of their disagreements
on "a handful of remaining principles" in Saint-Petersburg and will
therefore need to hold more talks "relatively quickly." "Based on
their conversation in Prague, I do believe that a breakthrough can
happen at Saint-Petersburg and/or shortly thereafter," he said.