Azernews.Az

ALMATY - The Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers are due to meet for further talks on settling the Upper Garabagh conflict in Almaty, Kazakhstan on July 17.
The meeting will be attended by the foreign ministers of the mediating OSCE Minsk Group’s co-chair countries and the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, Kazakh Foreign Minister Kanat Saudabayev, according to the OSCE website.
The meeting between Elmar Mammadyarov and Armenia’s Eduard Nalbandian will take place on the margins of the informal ministerial forum of the OSCE member states.
The Azerbaijani foreign minister said lately that one of the main topics of discussion will be a time frame for the liberation of the Armenia-occupied Lachin and Kalbajar regions of Azerbaijan. The Minsk Group offers returning the two strategic regions five years after an Armenian withdrawal from the five other regions around Nagorno Garabagh. Baku agrees to this, while Yerevan is seeking further talks on the issue.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus republics reared up in the late 1980s due to Armenia's territorial claims. Armenia has been occupying over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally-recognized territory since the early 1990s in defiance of international law. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but over a decade of efforts by US, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.*