Putin invites Azerbaijani, Armenian FMs for talks
Move by Russian president follows series of phone calls between three countries' leaders
Russian President Vladimir Putin has invited the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia to Moscow for peace talks Friday.
“The president of Russia is issuing a call to halt the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh on humanitarian grounds in order to exchange dead bodies and prisoners,” the Kremlin said in a statement.
The statement said Putin held a series of phone talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.
It said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov would mediate the peace talks.
Relations between the two former Soviet republics have been tense since 1991, when the Armenian military occupied Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Upper Karabakh, an internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.
New clashes erupted on Sept. 27, but international calls for a halt to the fighting have gone unanswered. Armenia has continued its attacks on civilians and Azerbaijani forces.
The OSCE Minsk Group -- co-chaired by France, Russia and the US -- was formed in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict, but to no avail. A cease-fire, however, was agreed upon in 1994.
Turkey has condemned the Armenian occupation and vowed support for Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has said Turkey must be involved in the process to resolve the decades-long conflict.
