The Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia have agreed on basic principles of settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, OSCE Minsk Group American Co-chair, Mettew Bryza said to journalists in Prague on May 7. He said the next meeting was expected to take place in St. Petersburg in the coming weeks.

During the EU Eastern Partnership Summit in Prague, the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia held meetings in the U.S. Embassy and discussed the issue on resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Yesterday’s meeting of the highest level was the 4th meeting between the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan on the Karabakh conflict settlement.

The previous meeting was held in Zurich on Jan. 28, 2009. The first meeting was held in St.Petersburg in June and second in Moscow in November 2008. The agreements have preliminary character, and therefore the Co-chairs refrained from making public the details, a Trend News correspondent said from Prague.

The “basic principles” envisages the final definition of a Nagorno-Karabakh status via a nation-wide voting at the last stage of the peace process, after all other measures of confidence are taken, including non-use of force, gradual withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from the occupied territories, return of internally displaced persons to their lands and restoration of trade links and relations. The “Basic principles” has been the result of the meetings of Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers in Prague since 2004, which was named the “Prague process”.

Presidents do agree on the basic approach. It’s now up to us, the co-chairs to actively work through the details and finalize these concepts, as requested by the ministers. We plan in coming weeks to work together with the ministers, Bryza said.

Bryza said he did not feel that yesterday’s discussion was overshadowed by the parallel discussion of normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations. The Turkish-Armenian normalization is a separate, although a parallel process.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the single most important issue for each country. Nothing overshadows these negotiations.

Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Elmar Mammadyarov and Edward Nalbandyan refused from making comments to journalists on the meeting results.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries started in 1988 over Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan since 1992, including Nagorno-Karabakh and 7 surrounding regions. Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group – Russia, France, and the U.S. – are currently holding the peace negotiations.

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