AZERBAIJAN, ARMENIA SIGNAL WILLINGNESS TO RESUME TALKS OVER DISPUTED ENCLAVE
Aida Sultanova
AP Worldstream
Jun 14, 2006
Azerbaijan and Armenia on Wednesday promised to continue talks over
Nagorno-Karabakh despite two failed efforts this year by the Caucasus
nations’ presidents to resolve the disputed enclave’s status.
The two countries’ foreign ministers, along with international
mediators, met in Paris for four hours of talks on Tuesday, a week
after Ilham Aliev of Azerbaijan and Robert Kocharian of Armenia met
in Romania on the sidelines of a Black Sea summit.
Top officials from both countries also traded blame about the repeated
failures.
Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov said in televised comments that
Tuesday’s meeting was "as always, tense and intensive. … In any
case, the process will continue. The next step will be determined in
the near future."
A high-ranking official with Armenia’s Foreign Ministry accused
Azerbaijan of making what he said were unconstructive steps, but said
the talks would continue. The official requested anonymity since he
was not authorized to speak for the ministry.
Russian and French mediators from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe’s so-called Minsk group also attended Tuesday’s
meeting.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but populated mostly by ethnic
Armenians, who have run it and seven contiguous districts since an
uneasy 1994 cease-fire ended six years of full-scale war. Sporadic
border clashes regularly break out.
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Associated Press Writer Avet Demourian contributed to this report
from Yerevan, Armenia.