Armenian president and Minsk group co-chairs discuss Karabakh peace process

YEREVAN, February 17. / ARKA /. Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan met Tuesday with visiting OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), James Warlick (USA) and Pierre Andre (France), as well as with personal representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office Andrzej Kasprzyk.

Sargsyan's press office said the co-chairs shared their impressions of the meetings they had in Azerbaijan. It said the president and the peace brokers discussed then a set of issues related to the current status of the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

It said president Sargsyan welcomed the statement the co-chairs issued on January 27 in Krakow that was different from their previous statements calling on Azerbaijan to observe its commitments to the peaceful settlement of the conflict and expressing also their serious concern about reported incursions across the line of contact and the Armenia-Azerbaijan border, resulting in casualties.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict erupted into armed clashes after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s as the predominantly Armenian-populated enclave of Azerbaijan sought to secede from Azerbaijan and declared its independence backed by succeeding referendum. A truce was brokered by Russia in 1994, although no permanent peace agreement has been signed.

Since then, Nagorno-Karabakh and several adjacent regions have been under the control of Armenian forces of Karabakh. Nagorno-Karabakh is the longest-running post-Soviet era conflict and has continued to simmer despite the relative peace of the past two decades, with snipers causing tens of deaths a year. - 0-