A five-sided meeting on settling the Nagorny Karabakh conflict is to be held on Saturday as part of an informal summit of OSCE foreign ministers in the Kazakh city of Almaty.
A long-standing dispute over Nagorny Karabakh, a breakaway region inside Azerbaijan with a predominantly ethnic Armenian population, has been a sticking point in relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
The conflict first erupted in 1988, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia. The OSCE Minsk Group, comprising the United States, Russia and France, mediates the conflict.
The Armenian, Azerbaijani, Russian and French foreign ministers - Edward Nalbandian, Elmar Mamedyarov, Sergei Lavrov, Bernard Kouchner - as well as U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton are expected to participate.
On July 14, Nalbandian told reporters in Yerevan that the Minsk Group co-chairmen are trying to organize the meeting but that it has not been fully agreed.
YEREVAN, July 17 (RIA Novosti)
