Leaders meet

Serzh

Aliyev The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia met in Bern Saturday to discuss their countries’ decades-old conflict over the breakaway Nagorny Karabakh region amid a recent wave of clashes.

Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev last met in 2014 in Paris without making any tangible progress over the territory disputed since the early 1990s.

Saturday’s talks too appeared to make little headway.

“During the meeting, the two sides exchanged views on different aspects of the conflict resolution. Unfortunately, the two sides’ attitudes don’t coincide,” Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian told journalists in comments broadcast on Armenian television.

Nalbandian, who along with his Azerbaijani counterpart joined Saturday’s talks after the presidents’ initial tete-a-tete, said the meeting agenda had been “influenced by the escalation of the situation, by Azerbaijani provocations, by blatant violations of the ceasefire.”

In recent months there has been an unprecedented escalation of the conflict, and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mediators recently warned “the status quo has become unsustainable.”

On Saturday, the OSCE’s Minsk Group said the talks had been useful, stressing that they “created an opportunity for the presidents to clarify their respective positions.” (AFP)