Azernews.Az

The Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents are scheduled to hold their next meeting in late January in Sochi, Russia to discuss the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, Armenia’s News.am website quoted a reliable source as saying.

Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan’s talks will be mediated by their Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the report said.

Nine such trilateral meetings on the Karabakh conflict have been held since 2008. During the latest meeting, hosted by President Medvedev in June 2011 in the Volga city of Kazan, the parties did not agree on a roadmap of a peace agreement, despite calls from the leaders of the mediating countries – the United States, Russia and France.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war in the early 1990s. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including the Nagorno Karabakh region, has been under the occupation of Armenian armed forces since a fragile ceasefire was signed in 1994. Numerous rounds of OSCE Minsk Group-brokered negotiations have been fruitless so far.

This story is published by AzerNEWS Weekly under a project funded by the Foundation for State Assistance to the Development of the Media under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic.