Azernews.Az

The Vienna meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was the first since fighting on the contact line of troops in early April.

The presidents reiterated their commitment to the ceasefire and the peaceful settlement of the conflict and agreed to finalize in the shortest possible time an OSCE investigative mechanism.

Yaakov Kedmi, a diplomat and former head of the Israeli liaison organization Nativ, commenting on the meeting, said that the Vienna meeting itself and resumption of negotiation process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is surely a positive factor.

“The meeting in Vienna is a natural course of events, because the main geopolitical actors - the U.S. and Russia - are interested in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict's speedy settlement,” he told Trend on May 17.

The expert went on to add that the conflict's sides don't want to resort to military settlement of the conflict.

Azerbaijan and Armenia for over two decades have been locked in conflict, which emerged over Armenian territorial claims. Since the 1990s war, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal, but they have not been enforced to this day.

A precarious cease-fire was signed in 1994. However, the Armenian forces commit armistice breaches on the frontline almost every day.

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