Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts, Elmar Mammadyarov and Edward Nalbandian, in Moscow on Thursday.
They were joined at their working meeting by the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, who are mediating a settlement to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
The meeting discussed the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, Public Radio of Armenia reported.
No more details of the meeting have been made public.
The three ministers last met in Moscow on 22 November, ahead of the OSCE summit in Astana at the start of December.
In their speeches to the Astana summit, the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents accused one another of not being interested in resolution of the conflict.
Nevertheless, in a joint statement issued at the summit with the heads of delegation of the Minsk Group co-chairing countries, the presidents "agreed that the time has come for more decisive efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims on the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Armenian armed forces occupied a swathe of Azerbaijani territory from 1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994 but 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.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
