Putin, Hollande Discuss Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Settlement

MOSCOW (TASS) — Russian President Vladimir Putin and his French counterpart Francois Hollande on Thursday discussed by phone the settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh and Ukraine, the Kremlin reported.

“Vladimir Putin informed Francois Hollande as head of a state-co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement of the results of the June 20 three-party meeting with Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sarkisian in St. Petersburg,” the statement said.

“The leaders of Russia and France expressed the hope that the results achieved at that meeting will contribute to promotion of the peace process. It has been agreed to continue active joint work within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group in that important sphere,” it said.

The two presidents also discussed other urgent issues on the international agenda with the stress on efforts to settle the Ukrainian crisis.

Talks on Nagorno-Karabakh have been held on the basis of the so-called Madrid Principles suggested by co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – Russia, France and the United States – in December 2007 in the Spanish capital.

They include three key principles written in the Helsinki Final Act: refraining from the threat or use of force, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination.