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Mediators report no progress in Karabakh talks after Almaty meeting

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Officials in Azerbaijan have denied that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in June presented his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts with new proposals to resolve the protracted conflict.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev reportedly cut short his visit to Russia soon after meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in Medvedev’s presence in St. Petersburg on June 17. Tensions along the line of contact of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops in Karabakh mounted within less than a day as Azeri commandos unsuccessfully attempted to overrun the Karabakh-Armenian positions from the northeast in an overnight attack, provoking a deadly engagement. Violations of the fragile ceasefire have become more frequent since that incident in which four Armenian soldiers and one Azeri were killed.

Speaking about the course of internationally mediated negotiations, President Sargsyan this week told representatives of the pro-government youth movement Miasin camping at Lake Sevan that the latest proposals on Karabakh were presented to the sides during the meeting in St. Petersburg held upon the Russian president’s initiative.

“Now Azerbaijan should provide an answer whether it accepts these proposals as a basis [for continuing negotiations on a framework agreement] or not. The rest, what is being spoken about by the officials of this country [Azerbaijan] is from the sphere of wishes or is what their ideas were about the previous stages of the negotiations,” underscored Sargsyan.

“There is one issue today – does the Azerbaijani side accept the latest proposals of the Minsk Group cochairmen or not? When Azerbaijan says it does, at that time we will continue the negotiations. If it says it doesn’t, then it means that perhaps other options should be sought,” the Armenian leader added.

“We say that the problem should be solved on the basis of compromises. But there is an importance circumstance and until it is resolved, all other steps, all proposals are not acceptable to us,” stressed Sargsyan.

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan meet in Almaty late last week on the margins of an Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe ministerial conference hosted by the Kazakh city. The top diplomats of the United States, Russia and France, the Minsk group co-chair countries, reported no essential progress after the five-lateral meeting.