YEREVAN (RFE/RL) — International mediators have toured the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict zone amid continuing deadly skirmishes between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces that left two Azerbaijani soldiers dead at the weekend.
The US, Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group held talks in Yerevan on Friday, proceeded to Karabagh on Saturday and were due to arrive in Baku on Monday.
Official sources in Armenia gave few details of their meetings with President Serge Sargisian and Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian. In a statement, the Armenian Foreign Ministry said they discussed ways of implementing understandings reached by Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s presidents at their last meeting hosted by their Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Sochiinlate January. counter to the agreements reached at Sochi.” It did not elaborate.
Sargisian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev pledged to “accelerate the achieve- ment of an agreement on the Basic Principles” of a Karabagh settlement put forward by the Minsk Group co-chairs. They said they also told the mediators to continue working with the conflicting parties on a mechanism for jointly investigating cease- fire violations along the “line of contact” around Karabagh and the Armenian- Azerbaijani border.
The statement quoted Nalbandian as complaining about recent statements by Azerbaijani leaders which he said “run issued in the southern Russian city,
In a joint statement with Medvedev The mediators discussed the issue with Karabagh President Bako Sahakian in Stepanakert on Saturday. But they gave no details of that discussion.
