Turkish President Abdullah Gul and his Russian counterpart, Dmitriy Medvedev, are to discuss the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh.
The subject will be part of discussions during the Turkish president's visit to Russia in September, where he wiill attend a Global Policy Forum in Yaroslavl on the 7th to the 8th, Turkish newspaper Zaman reported.
The presidents are also expected to discuss Iran's nuclear program, Afghanistan and the international situation.
Dmitriy Medvedev has been trying to mediate a solution to the Karabakh conflict, holding several meetings between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in the past two years. After the most recent meeting in Kazan on 25 June failed to produce a breakthrough in the talks, the Russian leader had a one-to-one meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Sochi.
Details of the meeting have not been made public, but some commentators say that Russia is proposing to send its own peacekeepers to Karabakh.
Baku's recent announcement that President Aliyev will not attend the CIS summit of heads of state in Tajikistan on 2-3 September has been interpreted as a sign of displeasure at Russia's Karabakh proposals.
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988 when Armenia made claims on the Azerbaijani territory. In a bitter war Armenian armed forces occupied a swathe of Azerbaijani territory, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. Despite a ceasefire in 1994, no long-term peace agreement has been reached.
The nub of the conflict remains unresolved - the competing claims of territorial integrity, which Azerbaijan insists takes precedence in the case of Karabakh, and self-determination, which Armenia wants to see for the Armenians of Karabakh.
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