Baku and Yerevan Agree to Consult on Putin’s Proposal

Baku and Yerevan accepted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s proposal to hold consultations in Moscow on October 9 on ending hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RIA Novosti. Yesterday Vladimir Putin invited Azerbaijan and Armenia to stop fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh “for humanitarian reasons” to exchange prisoners and dead bodies. Putin made this statement after a series of phone conversations with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. In Geneva, on October 8, consultations began on the conflict settlement between the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs - from Russia, France and the United States. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov also took part. Yesterday, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry announced that there would be no ceasefire, and President Aliyev repeated that Armenia should propose a timetable for the withdrawal of its units from Karabakh - and only then will the Minsk Group have something to discuss. The situation in the conflict zone in Nagorno-Karabakh escalated sharply on September 27. The renewed fighting has been called one of the most serious since the 1994 ceasefire. Yerevan and Baku accuse each other of conflict escalation. There are dead and wounded on both sides, including among the civilian population. The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh has been going on since the last years of the Soviet Union. The predominantly Armenian region declared independence from Azerbaijan in 1991, but none of the countries in the world recognized this step. Now Nagorno-Karabakh and a number of adjacent regions are controlled by Armenian forces.