Azernews.Az

BAKU – OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Upper (Nagorno) Karabakh held talks with senior officials in Baku on Tuesday.

During President Ilham Aliyev’s meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs - Igor Popov of Russia, Bernard Fassier of France, and Robert Bradtke of the United States - the parties discussed the current state of talks and prospects for settling the long-standing Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

The mediators held meetings with Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov both before and after their talks with President Aliyev. French co-chairman Fassier said the meetings had proceeded "very actively", but he did not elaborate further.

"This is still the first part of the mission. We will issue a joint statement in conclusion about the outcomes of our visit [to the region]," Fassier said.

Asked whether the Minsk Group co-chairs would further head to the Armenia-occupied Nagorno Karabakh region of Azerbaijan or the Armenian capital Yerevan, he said this is not known at this point.

"There are several options. This depends on a number of factors, with one of them being weather conditions."

The co-chairs will take part in an OSCE monitoring to be held Wednesday on the contact line of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. They are expected to hold meetings in Yerevan and Khankandi, the center of the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh republic, on Wednesday and Thursday.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place in the conflict zone since a brutal war in the 1990s that claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about one million Azerbaijanis from their homes. Armenia continues to occupy Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent Azerbaijani districts in defiance of international law. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but peace talks have been fruitless so far. Azerbaijan has not ruled out military action to liberate its land and has spent billions on dollars on building up its military.