Armenia, Azerbaijan leaders to discuss Karabakh settlement.

YEREVAN, November 22 (Itar-Tass) - The presidents of Armenia and
Azerbaijan, Serzh Sargsyan and Ilkham Aliyev, meet on Sunday in Munich to
continue discussing the settlement of the conflict in the mostly Armenian
populated Azerbaijani enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, the press service of
the Armenian president reported.
This will be their sixth meeting this year. It will be held at the
residence of the French consul general in Munich in the presence of
co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group on Nagorno Karabakh, who represent
Russia, France and the USA.
At the present moment, the sides are coordinating a draft framework
agreement on the settlement based on the so-called Madrid Principles,
presented by the co-chairmen in the Spanish capital in November 2007.
After the signing of the framework agreement work will begin on a basic
political document on the conflict settlement.
In July, the presidents of Russia, France and the USA confirmed in a
joint declaration within the G8 summit in Italy that the proposals of the
co-chairmen remain on the table of negotiations and urged the conflicting
sides to speed up work on final agreements.
The Madrid Principles, in particular, envisage the return under
control of Azerbaijan of its regions occupied by Armenia, the
establishment of an intermediate status of Nagorno Karabakh, envisaging
guarantees of security and administrative autonomy.
Armenia will be connected with Nagorno Karabakh by a corridor, and its
legal status will be determined within the framework of the process of
declaration of will, the results of which will get legal force. The
document stipulates the right of all displaced persons and refugees to
return to places of their former domicile. And finally, there are
international guarantees of security, which would include an operation to
support peace.
At talks on the Karabakh settlement, Armenia seeks "long-term
decisions, such decisions that will really bring peace and it will be
long-term," the Armenian president told reporters recently. "Our approach
to the whole process of negotiations is very serious and responsible,"
Sargsyan noted.
He is confident that "sober decisions" do exist, but "they can be
found only when the parties engaged in negotiations have a realistic
approach to the existing situation".
According to Sargsyan, it would be incorrect "to achieve such
decisions that will possibly be accessible for a certain period, but will
fail to ensure lasting peace".
Tass reports from Baku that prior to leaving for Munich the
Azerbaijani president, for his part, said he was going to Munich with his
own program. "We are going to this meeting with our own program. This
meeting must play a crucial role in the process of negotiations. If this
meeting also fails to produce results, then our hopes for negotiations
will be exhausted," he stressed.
He did not rule out that if his country lost hope for the process of
negotiations, it could opt for a military settlement. He said, in
particular, that Azerbaijan "has full authority to free its lands in a
military way". "International legal rules recognize this right of ours,"
he stressed. He also emphasized that his country "will never agree to the
independence of Nagorno Karabakh".
Over the past year-and-a-half, the meeting in Munich will become the
eighth round of direct negotiations of the Armenian and Azerbaijani
presidents. Four of them took place in Russia.

-0-zhe/