Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia met in Vienna to discuss the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on November 19.

Following the two-hour meeting, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan left the Palais Coburg hotel without making any comments to the press.

According to the media reports, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement was also discussed at the meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign ministers Elmar Mammadyarov and Edward Nalbadian, and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov of Russia, Jacques Faure of France, and James Warlick of the United States.

The OSCE Minsk Group is expected to issue a statement on the result of the meeting.

This is the first meeting between the two Presidents after two years.

The Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia met last time in January 2012 in Sochi.

Ahead of the meeting between the two Presidents, world powers expressed hope for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

U.S. State Secretary John Kerry said that the Nagorno-Karabakh issue was mulled during Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu's visit to Washington, the U.S. State Department reported.

"We have been trying to work ways that our ambassadors, who are front and center in this - in these initiatives, are continuing that process," he said.

He said the U.S. is urging that process to move forward, and the country will continue to be engaged in it.

Kerry said that he has had telephone conversations with the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Nagorno-Karabakh a day before the Presidents' meeting.

Davutoglu, in turn, said that Turkey and the U.S. have the same opinions on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

"We hope that the Nagorno-Karabakh problem will be solved soon and stability will be restored in the Caucasus region," Davutoglu said.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Russia hopes for the resumption of contacts between the Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities over the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, and is ready to assist in resolving the problem.

He expressed hope that direct contacts between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders will be resumed in the near future.

"As I said, we will do our best to help create the necessary atmosphere to reach a resolution for the conflict upon the agreements reached earlier," Lavrov said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.