Azernews.Az

BAKU – A senior US official met with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on Monday to discuss bilateral relations, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh and regional issues, the president`s press service said.

Tina Kaidanow, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, also held a meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov. Kaidanow said the United States attaches great importance to its cooperation with Azerbaijan and is interested in further development of bilateral relations, according to the Foreign Ministry.

She said that as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group brokering settlement to the Karabakh conflict, the U.S. is seeking a swift solution of the long-standing dispute and is ready to make its contribution to the peace process.

Azerbaijan and Armenia waged a brutal war in the early 1990s. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been under the occupation of the Armenian armed forces since a ceasefire was signed in 1994. Peace talks, brokered by the United States, Russia and France through the Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.

Mammadyarov told Kaidanow that the status quo in the Karabakh conflict was unacceptable. He stressed the importance of reopening communications for achieving lasting peace and stability in the volatile region, saying the main pre-condition for this is an Armenian pullout from the occupied Azerbaijani territories.

Later on Monday, Kaidanow held a closed-door meeting with local civil society representatives. Head of the Public Forum for Azerbaijan Eldar Namazov said democratic reform and the situation with human rights in the country topped the agenda of the meeting. He did not give details.

Kaidanow paid her last visit to Azerbaijan in September 2010, two months ahead of the country’s parliamentary elections. During that visit, she also held meetings with opposition leaders Isa Gambar and Ali Karimli.

Some analysts say the State Department official’s visit comes amid popular uprisings in Arab countries on one hand, and the Azerbaijani opposition’s stepping up its struggle by staging antigovernment protests on the other, which indicates that the U.S. has many issues to discuss with Azerbaijani officials.