WASHINGTON (AP) - Diplomats from the United States, Russia and France on Thursday urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to agree to a set of principles for a settlement on control of disputed territory, the U.S. State Department said in a statement.
At a meeting in Madrid, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner presented a document of conditions for future negotiations on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to the two countries’ foreign ministers.
U.S. officials have said talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the basic principles for negotiating a settlement have stalled on a few remaining points.
“The joint proposal that was transmitted today to the parties offered just and constructive solutions to these last remaining differences,” the State Department said in a statement.
In Thursday’s meeting, the three diplomats urged the two sides to accept the document as a starting point for talks on a final settlement.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year conflict that killed some 30,000 people and drove more than 1 million from their homes.
At a meeting in Madrid, U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner presented a document of conditions for future negotiations on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh to the two countries’ foreign ministers.
U.S. officials have said talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the basic principles for negotiating a settlement have stalled on a few remaining points.
“The joint proposal that was transmitted today to the parties offered just and constructive solutions to these last remaining differences,” the State Department said in a statement.
In Thursday’s meeting, the three diplomats urged the two sides to accept the document as a starting point for talks on a final settlement.
Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but has been controlled by ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended a six-year conflict that killed some 30,000 people and drove more than 1 million from their homes.