Ilham Aliyev
Ilham Aliyev met Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov of Russia, Robert Bradtke of the USA and Bernard Fassier of France and Andrzej Kasprzyk, special representative of the OSCE chairman-in-office. They discussed ways to resolve the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, state-run news agency AzerTAj reported.
The co-chairmen had talks with Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov earlier in the day.
The mediators are expected to take part in regular OSCE monitoring of the cease-fire along the contact line separating Armenian and Azerbaijani troops.
Reports of exchanges of fire on the contact line have recently become more frequent. At least two Azerbaijani soldiers were killed in close fighting on 31 August.
After visiting the front line, the mediators are to travel to Yerevan.
This is the mediators' first visit to the region since they made an uncharacteristically forthright statement after talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Kazakhstan on 17 July. The mediators said then that, "The efforts made so far by the parties to the conflict have not been sufficient to overcome their differences."
They "urged a greater spirit of compromise to reach agreement on a common basis for continuing the negotiations".
The mediating countries touched in their statement on the nub of the Karabakh conflict, 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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