Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has received a US delegation led by Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg.
The two met first in private and later continued the meeting accompanied by their delegations, AzerTAj reported.
Discussions centred on bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and the USA in a variety of sectors, energy cooperation, the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and regional issues.
James Steinberg conveyed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's greetings to Ilham Aliyev.
President Aliyev asked James Steinberg to pass on his greetings to Hillary Clinton.
James Steinberg arrived in Baku on 24 February after visiting Armenia and Georgia. In Armenia, he discussed the Karabakh conflict with President Serzh Sargsyan.
The USA is a co-chair the OSCE Minsk Group, alongside Russia and France, which is mediating a settlement to the Karabakh conflict.
James Steinberg's visit is taking place in the run-up to a meeting of the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Russian presidents in Sochi on 5 March.
The US visit is intended to reduce tensions in the region and settle the conflict over Karabakh, US State Department spokesman Philip Crowley told a briefing for foreign journalists on Thursday, according to Russian news agency ITAR-TASS.
He said that President Obama's administration wanted the countries of the South Caucasus to "settle their differences on the opening of borders" and to build ties. However, Washington admits that the "process has slowed down in the past year".
Crowley said that one the aims of James Steinberg's visit to Azerbaijan and Armenia was to "interact with these countries, encourage them to find ways to remove old concerns and differences between them".
He said the United States could not "want anything bigger than the countries involved", implying the suspended process of rapprochement between Ankara and Yerevan, ITAR-TASS commented.
"Of course, we will continue the search for ways to reduce tension and provide assistance in moving forward, but we realize that at this stage the situation remains complex," the US spokesman said.
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. Despite a ceasefire in 1994, no long-term peace agreement has been reached. Exchanges of fire remain frequent along the contact line separating the two sides' troops.
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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