Azerbaijani officials to discuss disputed enclave w/intl negotiators

Azerbaijani officials to discuss disputed enclave with international
negotiators

AP Worldstream; Jul 11, 2005

Azerbaijani officials were slated to meet with international
negotiators Monday for talks on the disputed enclave of
Nagorno-Karabakh, a foreign ministry official said.

Representatives from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in
Europe are trying to resolve the long-running conflict over the
mountainous enclave, which was seized by ethnic Armenian forces in a
war with Azerbaijan in the early 1990s.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry said Russian, French and
U.S. diplomats would be meeting with President Ilham Aliev and other
Azerbaijani officials.

A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the enclave’s final political
status has not been determined and shooting breaks out frequently
between the two sides, which face off across a demilitarized buffer
zone.

Aliev last month said there signs of progress in efforts to resolve
the dispute.

The delegation later was to travel to Armenia.