Armenian, Russian and Azeri leaders discussing Karabakh settlement

YEREVAN, January 23. /ARKA/. The presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are having talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian RIA Novosti reported. The meeting is held in Krasnaya Polyana near southern Russian city of Sochi. 

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev are in Sochi at the invitation of the Russian leader. This is their tenth trilateral talks since 2008. The Kremlin has pointed out that a peaceful resolution of the conflict is among its priorities in the region.

The head of Azerbaijan and Armenia said they were ready for another summit to negotiate a peaceful settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in early December 2011. In 2011, Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders met twice with Russian president Medvedev in the trilateral format on March 5 in Sochi on June 24 in Kazan. In Kazan they were said to narrow their differences on the contentious provisions of the Madrid Principle - a document designed by the OSCE Minsk Group to settle the dispute.

The documents calls, particularly, for strengthening of confidence-building measures, resumption of dialogue between the representatives of civic society, academic and public circles of the two countries. 

Nagorno-Karabakh, populated overwhelmingly by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan following a three-year war that left some 30,000 dead. A Russia-brokered ceasefire ended the hostilities in 1994, but peace has remained fragile since then. The current Minsk Group-mediated negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan have not brought a peace agreement yet.

The latest peace plan of the international mediators calls for the Armenian withdrawal from some of the territories held by the Karabakh military, the return of displaced people, security guarantees for Karabakh and its Armenian population and the possibility of a future referendum to decide the area’s final legal status. -0-