The National Assembly RPA faction MP Khosrov Harutyunyan welcomes every meeting over the issue of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement.
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The European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said she would meet both presidents later on Monday.
Senior U.S. officials say Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault planned to bring the two presidents together in Vienna on Monday to urge them to recommit to a 1994 cease-fire, take steps to build confidence and resume stalled peace talks that have dragged on for two decades without visible result.
The Karabakh side accused Azerbaijan of continuing to violate the terms of the April 5 verbal agreement on cease-fire on the night of May 17 by using firearms of different calibers as well as armored vehicle guns, mortars and grenade-launchers. Hostilities between ethnic Armenians living in Azerbaijan’s enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh and the central Azeri government erupted in the late 1980s.
Monday’s meeting between Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev in Vienna was the first since fighting between Armenian-backed separatists in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azeri forces restarted.
May 15 Azerbaijan on Sunday announced joint military exercises with Georgia and Turkey, plans which are likely to raise tensions with neighbouring Armenia a day before talks in Vienna over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Sergei Lavrov also said that Armenian President and Azerbaijan President will agree in June on the date and place of their next meeting where they will discuss characteristics for settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
The two parties originally fought a war over the disputed territory in the early 1990s with thousands killed on both sides and hundreds of thousands displaced. France, Russia and the USA have been trying for years as co-chair of the Minsk Group to consolidate the ceasefire and the resumption of the political process.
Lavrov said he sensed there was now a desire on both sides for a compromise and that Russian Federation was ready to do what it could to broker a more satisfactory deal.
With peace efforts stuttering to a halt in recent years, both sides in the conflict began rearming heavily, with energy-rich Azerbaijan spending vast sums on new weaponry.
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Turkey – at loggerheads with Moscow since Ankara downed a Russian jet near its border with Syria a year ago – has pledged to support its ally Azerbaijan.
