Azeri, Armenian leaders vow to keep up talks on envlave stand-off
Agence France Presse — English
September 16, 2004 Thursday 7:31 AM GMT
ASTANA Sept 16 — The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Thursday
promised to keep up dialogue on the bitter stand-off between their
countries over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabach.
Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Robert Kocharian of Armenia
held more than three hours of late-night talks in the Kazakh capital
mediated by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, but gave few clues as
to what had passed between them.
“We need time — the president of Azerbaijan knows our position
more concretely — the process is continuing in a constructive way,”
Kocharian said at a joint news conference with Aliyev.
“Further development can resolve this question — we discussed various
questions on the path to a resolution,” Aliyev said.
Aliyev had earlier stressed the importance of Thursday’s talks over
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which saw the two neighbours fight a
war in the early 1990s and which remains unresolved.
Aliyev has faced calls in his home country to take a bolder stand
on the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and the thousands of Azeris who have
fled the disputed area.
International mediators had been urging face-to-face meetings between
the two sides, which had faltered during the transition of power in
Azerbaijan from Aliyev’s father Heidar.
In the early 1990s ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous
territory wedged between Armenia and Azerbaijan, declared their
independence from Azeri rule.
A war followed in which the separatists, with help from Armenia, forced
out Azeri troops and took de facto control of the enclave. The war left
about 30,000 people dead and forced over a million to flee their homes.
Though a ceasefire was signed in 1994, the war has never been
declared over and Azerbaijan has repeatedly threatened to use force
to re-establish its control over Nagorno-Karabakh.