Putin, Medvedev closely coordinate their efforts on Karabakh settlement - Kremlin spokesman

MOSCOW, April 5. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev are coordinating their efforts on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday. "Naturally, they are coordinating their efforts with due account of the president’s conversations with his counterparts from Azerbaijan and Armenia," he said when asked whether the president had issued any instructions of the mediatory character to the prime minister who is leaving on visits to Yerevan and Baku. Peskov said the president had two consecutive conversations with the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia earlier on Tuesday. "The result is that after, so to say, lower-level working contacts, Putin could personally call his partners in Azerbaijan and Armenia to stop hostilities and resume the ceasefire regime," he said. "This is the key result." Efforts, in his words, will be continued. "Naturally, details of conversations cannot be made public in such situation, as these are very sensitive matters," he added. The situation along the line of engagement of the conflicting parties in Nagorno-Karabakh deteriorated dramatically overnight to April 2. Following fierce armed clashes at the contact line, the parties to the conflict accused each other of violating truce. The conflict between neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up but was mainly populated by Armenians, broke out in the late 1980s. In 1991-1994, the confrontation spilled over into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and some adjacent territories. Thousands left their homes on both sides in a conflict that killed 30,000. A truce was called between Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh republic on one side and Azerbaijan on the other in May 1994. Read more