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Armenian PM says ready to meet with Azerbaijani president

The Armenian prime minister said he is ready to hand over to the Azerbaijani president all maps of mine fields that are now in the rare of the Azerbaijani army

YEREVAN, October 3. /TASS/. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said on Sunday he is ready to meet with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. He also said that talks could be organized between the two countries’ top diplomats.

"I said back in Jul y that we are ready for high-and top-level meetings, i.e. at the level of foreign ministers and in the prime-minister-president format. In my address to the United Nations General Assembly, I noted that the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh is waiting for its resolution. I can say that we have welcomed several OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs’ statements stressing the necessity of settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and restoring the peace process," Pashinyan’s press secretary Mane Gevorgyan quoted him as saying on her Facebook account.

The Armenian prime minister said he is ready to hand over to the Azerbaijani president all maps of mine fields that are now in the rare of the Azerbaijani army. He also called on Aliyev to take to the meeting all Armenian prisoners.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said on Saturday he was ready to meet with Paahinyan "when he is ready for that." He also promised an "adequate response" if Armenia hands over mine filed maps.

The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs - Russia, France and the United States.

Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, 2020, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 9, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a joint statement on a complete ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh. Under the document, the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides stopped at the positions that they had held and Russian peacekeepers were deployed along the engagement line in Nagorno-Karabakh and along the Lachin corridor that connects Armenia with the enclave to exercise control of the ceasefire observance. Apart from that, a number of districts came over to Baku’s control.