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Armenia, Azerbaijan presidents agree to meet this month to discuss ways to settle Karabakh issue

It will happen after an almost two-year interval

Photo ITAR-TASS/Michail Klimentiev

Photo ITAR-TASS/Michail Klimentiev

YEREVAN, November 6 (Itar-Tass) - The Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan, Serge Sargsyan and Ilkham Aliyev, have agreed to meet this month after an almost two-year interval, the Co-Chairmen of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh annnounced. They represent Russia, France, and the United States.

"Sargsyan and Aliyev have reaffirmed their readiness to meet in order to specify their approaches to a settlement of the problem and discuss the possibility of headway in this respect," says a statement issued by the Co-Chairmen and circulated here at the close of their regular tour of the region.

Ambassadors Igor Popov (Russia), Jacues Faure (France) and James Warlick (USA), as well as Andrzej Kaspsik, personal envoy of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, visited Baku on November 4, and Yerevan on November 5 "to help the sides in the search for ways to settle the conflict over Karabakh," the document points out. They stated that they "will go on working on the forthcoming meeting" between the leaders of the two countries.

The Co-Chairmen called on the sides "to show restrainy both at the place and in public statemnts". "Any military action may be viewed only as an attempt at impairing the peace process," the mediators warned.

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