BAKU (Sputnik) — On May 16, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev met in Vienna to discuss the conflict. The meeting was attended by the foreign ministers of the United States, Russia and France.
"The outcome of the meeting in Vienna was discussed as part of preparations for another high-level meeting in June to promote the immediate settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," Hikmet Hajiyev told RIA Novosti.
The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1988, when the autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, before the latter proclaimed independence with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The warring sides agreed to a cessation of hostilities in 1994.
The violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population, escalated in April. Baku and Yerevan have accused each other of provoking hostilities that led to multiple deaths on both sides.