OREANDA-NEWS.  January 23, 2012. Dmitry Medvedev, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, and President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan discussed further steps toward settling the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

The three presidents ended the meeting by adopting a joint declaration on the Nagorno Karabakh settlement.

In their declaration, the three leaders noted the large amount of work that has been done towards reaching a settlement since the trilateral meetings began on November 2, 2008, when the Moscow Declaration was adopted. The presidents stated that intensive talks have brought progress in agreeing on the basic principles for a settlement.

Noting the importance of moving on to actually drafting a peace agreement, the document states that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan expressed their willingness to speed up efforts to reach agreement on the basic principles, taking into account the work accomplished thus far. They also stressed the value of the mediation efforts made by Russia and the other countries co-chairing the OSCE’s Minsk Group, and said they hoped that Russia, the USA, and France will continue these mediation efforts and keep playing an active part in the settlement process right up until definitive peace and stability is brought to the region.

The presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia noted the report of the Minsk Group’s co-chairmen on the mechanism they drafted, together with the current OSCE chairman’s personal representative, for investigating incidents along the ceasefire line and instructed that this work continue.  

The presidents affirmed in their declaration that one of the confidence-building measures in the Nagorno Karabakh settlement process will be to develop humanitarian contacts between the two sides. In this respect, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia expressed their readiness to facilitate continued efforts to develop dialogue between their countries’ intelligentsia, academic and public circles.