MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that Moscow was willing to host the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan for talks, a ministry statement cited him as saying.

He said Russia would continue to work both independently and together with other representatives of the Minsk group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to mediate in the conflict between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces, which has seen the fiercest fighting since the mid-1990s in recent days.