Azernews.Az

YEREVAN – OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict met with Armenian Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian in Yerevan on Thursday, ahead of the Russian-brokered meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents due in late June, Armenian media reported.

The Russian, French and US co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, who visited the region to set the stage for the presidents’ talks, informed Nalbandian of the meetings they held earlier in the Azerbaijani capital Baku and in Khankandi, the center of the self-proclaimed Nagorno Karabakh republic. The co-chairs expressed hope that progress will be made in agreeing basic principles of Karabakh settlement at the meeting of Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan to be hosted by their Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev in Kazan on June 25.

Nalbandian claimed Yerevan has issued its clear-cut stance on the latest version of the basic conflict settlement principles submitted by the mediators, and if Baku agrees, it will be possible to reach progress in the peace process.

The West has called on Armenia and Azerbaijan to endorse the basic principles for settlement drafted in 2007, which stipulate a gradual Armenian withdrawal from the territories around Nagorno Karabakh and an "interim status" for the region, giving it enhanced legitimacy, but not independence.

Azerbaijan and Armenia waged a brutal war which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno Karabakh, has been under the occupation of the Armenian armed forces since a ceasefire was signed in 1994.

The Minsk Group co-chairs - Igor Popov of Russia, Bernard Fassier of France and Robert Bradtke of the United States - met with top officials in Baku on Monday. On Tuesday, they crossed the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops into Nagorno Karabakh, Azerbaijan’s occupied region where ethnic Armenians are running a self-proclaimed republic, and had a meeting with its leader on the following day. The mediators further headed to the Armenian capital Yerevan.