Today, Russian, Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents are due to meet in the Russian southern resort city of Sochi to discuss Nagorno-Karabakh settlement issues, RIA Novosti reports. This meeting is to be the eighth on held in trilateral format. Azerbaijani President, Ilham Aliev has already departed for Sochi.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has invited his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan to Sochi to discuss the settlement issues of the long-pending territorial dispute. On January 18, during a visit to Cyprus, Sargsyan said that Azerbaijan does not have legal, political, or moral grounds for claiming the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly ethnic Armenian region.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh first sparked in late 1980s, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia. More than 30,000 people are estimated to have died on both sides between 1988 and 1994. Nagorno-Karabakh has remained in Armenian control since then.
Russia, along with France and the United States, is a member of the OSCE Minsk Group, which is mediating efforts to resolve the conflict. In March 2008, U.N.’s General Assembly voted a resolution for the immediate withdrawal of Armenian troops from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan and reasserted the right of Baku on these territories. But France, the U.S. and Russia vetoed the resolution. This formal meeting is the fourth in the past two years. The last one took place in Kishinev on Oct. 9 during the CIS summit.
The three presidents met on Jan. 25 in Sochi, joined Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and assistant to the Russian president, Sergey Prykhodko. Armenia was represented by Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and Presidential Administration Head Vigen Sarkisian. Joining them from Azerbaijan was Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.
The week before, OSCE mediators met both Azeri and Armenian presidents in their capitals and handed over an updated version of the 2007 Madrid document.
Also, two days before, Sergey Narishkin, a representative of the Russian presidential administration, led a delegation to Baku to assess the situation.
Prior to the meeting Armen Sargsyan, Chairman of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun (ARF-D) faction, Parliament of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic told journalists that "there are expectations for two reasons: Azerbaijan is not ready for negotiations and Nagorno-Karabakh itself is not involved in the negotiations. Moreover, the trilateral format has, as if, exhausted its potential," NEWS.am reports.
