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Azerbaijani, Armenian Leaders Avoid Contact At Summit

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  • Azerbaijani, Armenian Leaders Avoid Contact At Summit

    AZERBAIJANI, ARMENIAN LEADERS AVOID CONTACT AT SUMMIT

    Journal of Turkish Weekly
    July 13 2010

    YEREVAN -- The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan avoided
    face-to-face talks on the sidelines of an informal summit of seven
    former Soviet republics held in Yalta, Ukraine over the weekend,
    RFE/RL's Armenian Service reports.

    Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian's office said the summit
    attendees discussed ways of boosting "economic integration"
    within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). It reported
    no separate meetings between Sarkisian and other participants, who
    included Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Russia President
    Dmitry Medvedev.

    Sarkisian and Aliyev have often used CIS summits for negotiations
    on the conflict over the breakaway Azerbaijani region of
    Nagorno-Karabakh. Sarkisian spokesman Armen Arzumanian told RFE/RL
    ahead of the summit that no such meeting was planned at Yalta.

    Aliyev and Sarkisian last met on June 17 in St. Petersburg, for talks
    hosted by Medvedev. That meeting was followed by the most serious
    Armenian-Azerbaijani cease-fire violation in Karabakh in more than
    two years, which heightened tensions between the conflicting sides.

    Four Armenian soldiers and one Azerbaijani soldier were killed in
    fighting on the region's "line of contact" the night of June18.

    The United States, Russia, and France have urged both sides to exercise
    restraint and iron out their differences on a framework peace accord
    proposed by the OSCE's Minsk Group. They hope to broker further
    progress in the negotiating process at an meeting this week in Almaty,
    Kazakhstan between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers.

    However, recriminations traded between Baku and Yerevan in recent days
    have thrown doubt on the chances of a successful Almaty meeting. The
    Armenian Foreign Ministry on July 9 strongly denied Azerbaijani claims
    that the Almaty talks will focus on details of an Armenian troop
    withdrawal from Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh.

    A spokesman for Bako Sahakian -- the leader of the self-proclaimed
    Nagorno-Karabakh Republic -- said today that the authorities in
    Stepanakert have no expectations from the Almaty meeting because of
    Azerbaijan's "extremely nonconstructive" position.

    Davit Babayan told RFE/RL that "[Baku's position] leaves no room for
    the search for a mutually acceptable compromise solution."

    Babayan pointed to the Azerbaijani leaders' insistence that the
    principle of territorial integrity take precedence over that of
    peoples' self-determination as championed by the Armenian side.

    "They must understand one thing," Babayan said. "For Karabakh, a
    return to 1988, in terms of both the status and territory, is out of
    the question."




    From: A. Papazian
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