Official Yerevan has described the Monday talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan as “constructive, useful and sincere”.
At a news briefing today Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian also expressed the gratitude of the Armenian side to French President Francois Hollande for hosting the summit in Paris.
“During the past three months it is the third meeting of the presidents on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, which shows that the [OSCE Minsk Group] co-chair countries steadfastly continue to make joint efforts on the settlement of the conflict,” Nalbandian said, as quoted by the Armenian Foreign Ministry’s press office.
The minister also said that President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev discussed a variety of issues on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and confidence-building measures proposed by Hollande during his tour of the South Caucasus last May.
The French leader reportedly called on the visiting Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders to show “political will” to overcome the differences and prepare their peoples for peace as he hosted their talks in Paris on October 27.
The face-to-face talks between Sarkisian and Aliyev were followed by discussions in an extended format that also included the French, American and Russian co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.
The U.S. co-head of the group, James Warlick, positively evaluated the talks afterwards. “I think the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan agree the Paris summit was a positive step. Thanks to Francois Hollande,” he wrote on his Twitter account on Tuesday.
The new round of Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations follows an unprecedented escalation of violence in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone observed in early August. At least 20 troops were reportedly killed in ceasefire violations that the parties to the conflict blamed on each other.