The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, mediating a solution to the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Karabakh, have met the Azeri foreign minister.
Robert Bradtke of the USA, Bernard Fassier of France and Igor Popov of Russia met Elmar Mammadyarov on Tuesday, 1 news.az reported.
They discussed the current state of negotiations to resolve the Karabakh conflict.
It has been a busy two days for OSCE visits to Azerbaijan.
The OSCE chairman-in-office, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis, held talks with Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and with President Ilham Aliyev in Baku on Monday.
Azubalis yesterday received a report from his special representative, Andrzej Kasprzyk, into the killing of an Azerbaijani boy by Armenian sniper fire. The findings of the report have not yet been made public.
Fariz Badalov was shot on 8 March as he played outside his house in the village of Orta Garvand, close to the contact line separating Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.
Soon after the incident, the Minsk Group co-chairs announced their intention to visit the region. They condemned loss of life along the contact line and urged all sides to exercise restraint and fulfill their obligations undertaken in Sochi earlier this month to seek to resolve all contentious issues peacefully.
Armenia and Azerbaijan fought a bloody war over the Azerbaijani territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which ended when a ceasefire was signed in 1994. Armenian armed forces occupy a swathe of Azerbaijani territory, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts. Despite the ceasefire, 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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