Foreign Minister Ali Babacan is scheduled to meet separately with his counterparts from Azerbaijan and Armenia today in Helsinki on the sidelines of a gathering of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Officials say there is no formal decision to have three-way talks similar to the one the three ministers had at this year's UN General Assembly in September, though observers still expect trilateral talks today.
In addition to separate talks with Babacan, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian are expected to have a bilateral meeting. Representatives from Russia, France and the United States, co-leaders of the OSCE's Minsk Group, working for a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, will also be attending the meeting. The main item in the talks is the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, which poisons not only Azerbaijani-Armenian ties but also relations between Ankara and Yerevan. Turkey severed its diplomatic ties and closed its border gate with Armenia in 1993 in protest of the occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan by Armenian forces. Ankara is pursuing a policy of rapprochement with Yerevan but the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute is one of the main obstacles to reconciliation.
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