Presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia sign declaration on Nagorno Karabakh - UPDATED

The trilateral summit on the resolution of the Karabakh conflict was held in Meindorf castle under Moscow by initiative of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. Earlier the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia had a one-on-one meeting which was followed by the meeting in the trilateral format in the Stone hall of the castle. By its completion Medvedev read the text of the document, they signed by results of the talks, in the presence of Aliyev and Sargsyan.

"We have discussed in details the prospects of the resolution of Nagorno Karabakh conflict by political means, by way of continuation of a direct dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia under the mediation of Russia, the United States and France as the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs", says the declaration.

The Presidents "state that they will promote improvement of the situation in the South Caucasus and provision of establishment of stability and security in the region by way of the political resolution of the conflict on the basis of principles and norms of international law and decisions and documents, adopted in these frames in order to create favorable conditions for economic development and comprehensive cooperation in the region", reports ITAR-TASS.

Aliyev, Sargsyan and Medvedev "confirm the importance of continuation of the mediation efforts by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs considering their meeting in Madrid in November of 2007 and further discussions for development of basic principles of political resolution.

The leaders of the three countries agreed that "attainment of the peaceful solution must be accompanied by legally binding international guarantees of all its aspects and stages".

The declaration says that the heads of Azerbaijan and Armenia "agreed to continue work on the coordination of the political resolution of the Karabakh conflict during the further contacts on the high level and instructed their Foreign Ministers to intensify further efforts in the negotiation process in cooperation with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs".

The last paragraph of the resolution says that the Presidents "consider it important to encourage creation of conditions for execution of measures to strengthen trust in the context of efforts on resolution".

The main feature of the declaration on Nagorno Karabakh is that this is the first agreement on the paper, concluded since 1994 "directly between the two conflict parties", stressed the Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Yuri Merzlyakov. He called the declaration "a very important document", which may become a stimulus for the further peaceful resolution of the conflict.

It has been the first document undersigned by the leaders of both conflict parties - Armenia and Azerbaijan - since 1994.

/Day.Az/