Azernews.Az

New persons representing Armenia should be drawn to the next stage of talks on settling the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh, the French mediator has said but he did not elaborate.
The OSCE Minsk Group co-chair Bernard Fassier told reporters on Sunday in Khankandi, an Azeri town turned by Armenians into the center of the self-proclaimed republic, that a new stage has begun in the peace process.
He stressed that mutual trust between the conflicting sides was needed to reach successful resolution of the conflict.
Commenting on his participation in last week's large military parade held in Baku, he said effective mediation in the peace process required being able to properly evaluate the realities concerning the parties to the conflict.
Russian co-chair Yuri Merzlyakov declined to elaborate on the principles of conflict resolution currently on the agenda.
"There are 14-15 principles, of which only four are causing differences of opinion," he said.
Merzlyakov said Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sarkisian had recommended during their talks on June 6 that the co-chairs step up efforts at the conflict settlement based on those principles and the ones put forth in Madrid late in 2007.
The Minsk Group co-chairs from the United States, Russia and France submitted written proposals on the Garabagh settlement to the Azerbaijani and Armenian governments in the Spanish capital on November 28. The document is a set of basic principles for the peaceful settlement of the dispute. The mediators said these were useful proposals formulated officially for the first time.
The co-chairs visited the region for the first time since the latest meeting of the two countries' leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia. After holding meetings in Baku over the weekend, the intermediaries left for Yerevan where they informed the Armenian side of the outcomes of discussions held with Azerbaijani officials. On Sunday, the mediators visited Khankandi.
After wrapping up their visit to the region, the co-chairs left for Vienna where they will attend a broad meeting of all 11 members of the Minsk Group. Information is to be provided to its participants about the outcomes of the talks held in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Armenia and Azerbaijan waged a war over the mountainous region of Upper Garabagh in the early 1990s, which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. Armenia has been occupying over 20% of Azerbaijan's internationally-recognized territory since then. The ceasefire accord was signed in 1994, but the OSCE-brokered peace talks have been fruitless so far.