North-South Corridor provides cheaper transit route:India

IRNA, Iran
Sept 16 2004

New Delhi, Sept 16, IRNA — The North-South Corridor Agreement
provides a faster and cheaper transit route for trade to Iran, Russian
Federation and beyond, which will make country`s exports competitive,
says a release of Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry Thursday.
The agreement was signed between India, Iran and Russian Federation
to facilitate movement of goods via the Caspian Sea and Astrakhan
to Russia and adjoining countries of the CIS region. In order to
enhance trade with CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) region,
Indian government has undertaken many trade facilitation steps and
trade promotion measures. These include government lines of credit,
inter-banking relations, double taxation avoidance agreement, bilateral
investment protection agreement and strengthening of institutional
mechanisms like joint commission meetings, joint business councils
and trade missions.

Considering the potential that this region offers, the government had
launched focus on the CIS program in 2003 to enhance India`s trade
with this region, it said.

India`s exports to the CIS region, including Russia, have grown from
US$919 million in the year 2002-03 to US$1.020 billion in the year
2003-04, registering a growth of 11 percent.

Under the India Development Initiative, the Department of
Economic Affairs has issued new guidelines for government lines
of credit. Recipient countries have been put under four different
classifications. In the revised policy guidelines the State Bank of
India, Bank of Baroda and Indian Overseas Bank are also being used in
addition to EXIM Bank for channeling the LOCs to other governments.
To promote and facilitate trade, DTAA has already been signed with
Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan,
Uzbekistan, Armenia and Belarus.

Negotiations are on for signing the same with Azerbaijan. Steps will
be taken for initiating negotiations with rest of the CIS countries,
including Moldova, Georgia and Tajikistan. The government has signed
BIPA with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,
Russian Federation, Ukraine, Armenia and Belarus.

The government has allowed exports of Indian goods on consignment
basis under the debt repayment route to the Russian Federation. ECGC
has upgraded credit ratings of a number of countries in the CIS region
as well as liberalized its under writing policy to these countries
which will help in promoting exports to this region.

2160/2323/1416

Operations, Professionalism Wow Civilian Leaders
By Donna Miles, American Forces Press Service

Defenselink.mil
Sept 16 2004

SOUTH CHINA SEA, Sept. 16, 2004 — The crew of USS John C. Stennis
treated civilian leaders from throughout the United States today to a
demonstration of what Rear Adm. Pat Walsh, commander of Carrier Group
7, called “raw power” able to project U.S. military force anywhere
in the world at a moment’s notice.

Dee Ruckman, a partner with Gardere Wynne Sewell in Dallas, left, and
Kim Labonte, co-owner and business manager for Labonte Motorsports,
prepare for an “e-ticket” ride to USS John C. Stennis aboard a C-2
Greyhound aircraft. Photo by Tech. Sgt. Moreen Ishikawa, USAF (Click
photo for screen-resolution image); high- resolution image available.

The civilian leaders — a “who’s who” of business owners, chief
executive officers, educators, local politicians and civic leaders —
visited the carrier Stennis, deployed about 200 miles off the coast
of Singapore, during a weeklong trip throughout the Pacific to observe
U.S. military operations firsthand.

The visit is part of the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference, a
program created in 1948 to introduce civilian “movers and shakers” with
little or no military exposure to the workings of the armed forces.

Today’s visit began with an hour-long flight from Paya Labar Air
Base, Singapore, to the carrier aboard C-2 Greyhound carrier onboard
delivery aircraft. Most exciting for most of the visitors was the
arrested landing, in which arresting wires brought the aircraft to
a screeching halt within less than the length of a football field
after reaching the flight deck.

Capt. Dave Buss, commanding officer of the Stennis, described the
landing, as well as the catapult off the carrier at the end of the
visit, as “the best e- ticket ride this side of Disney World.”

“I loved it!” exclaimed Bob Heidrick, vice chairman of the Spencer
Stuart executive recruiting firm in Chicago. “It’s the best airline
I’ve ever flown!” quipped Andy Camacho, chairman and CEO of Camacho
Inc. in Los Angeles.

Aboard the carrier, the group members toured the combat direction
center, where Cmdr. John “J.R.” Jones explained the carrier’s
self-defense capabilities.

They visited the carrier air traffic-control center, which controls
and manages the vessel’s air plan and manages its refueling tankers.
They climbed to the primary flight control area, where Cmdr. Dave
Swathwood, “air boss,” and his crew were directing launch-and-recovery
operations.

But a highlight was walking out on the flight deck, watching the
Nimitz-class carrier’s F-14 Tomcat, S-3 Viking and F-18E Super
Hornet aircraft catapult off the deck at about 150 miles per hour,
and arrested landings for other aircraft returning to the carrier.

Adam Aron, chairman and CEO of Vail Resorts, said he was amazed by the
capabilities the carrier provides. “It’s so incredible that we’re 6,000
to 7,000 miles off the Pacific coast of the United States, and here’s
a full- fledged airfield operating in the South China Sea,” he said.

Other group members said they were particularly impressed by the
teamwork required to provide that capability. “I’m just speechless.
It’s amazing to see the talent out there,” said Chris Lien, president
of Birdsall Sand and Gravel, Inc., in Rapid City, S.D. “There’s a
choreography going on, and everybody works in such harmony together.”

“It’s just amazing — a choreographed ballet,” agreed Angela Williams,
CEO of Communication Consulting and Coaching based in Mount Pleasant,
S.C. “What I can’t get over is the coordination and expertise required
not only to catapult, but also to land.”

But amidst all the wowing over the high-tech aircraft and their
maneuvers, Bryan Ardouny, executive director of the Armenian American
Political Action Committee in Missoula, Mont., joined other members
of the group in saying he was most struck by the professionalism of
the servicemembers behind the high- powered operations.

“The technical capabilities are awesome,” he said. “But as impressive
as that all is, what really stands out to me are the men and women
who make it work.”

Buss told the civilian group that’s exactly the message he hoped they
would take away from their visit and share with their communities when
they return home. “We can buy equipment and technology and do flight
operations, but the most important thing here — and the reason I’ve
stayed in the Navy for so long — is the dedication of the phenomenal
men and women who make all this happen,” he said.

More than half his crew joined the Navy after the United States was
attacked by terrorists on Sept. 11, 2001. “They wanted to contribute,”
Buss said. “They wanted to do something selfless, and I can’t think
of anything more selfless than what they’re doing out here.”

Irma Flores, chief financial officer for Hospital Klean of Texas,
Inc., said the visit gave her a deeper appreciation of the U.S.
military and the sacrifices servicemembers make every day. “These
people give up their lives and their families to protect the way of
life that so many of us take for granted,” she said. “It’s heartwarming
to see and makes me appreciate them so much more.”

Experts join talks of presidents at CIS summit (adds)

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 16, 2004 Thursday

ASTANA, September 16 — The second round of talks began at the CIS
summit that opened in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana on Thursday.

CIS delegations have joined the talks of presidents and prime
ministers.

The signing of joint documents and a wrap-up new conference are
planned after discussions.

The struggle against terrorism centres the summit’s agenda.

The CIS presidents will make a statement condemning “the terrorist
attacks of unprecedented cruelty and cynicism on civilian facilities”,
the Russian president’s aide Sergei Prikhodko told Itar-Tass.

“The heads of state describe the terrorist attacks as criminal and not
unjustifiable regardless of their motives, wherever and by whoever
they are committed. The statement expresses the determination to
fight all forms of terrorism as the UN Charter warrants it,” he said.

“Several documents on which necessary intra-state procedures have
been fulfilled are proposed for signing by the CIS presidents and
CIS foreign ministers without discussion,” he said.

Prikhodko cited documents that change and amend the frame agreement
between the CIS Council of heads of state and the CIS Council of
Heads of Government, and provisions on the Economic Concil and the
Council of Foreign Ministers.

The presidents also will make an address “to peoples of the CIS state
members and the international community in connection with the 60th
anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War”.

An official of the Russian president’s administration told Itar-Tass
that several of the CIS states had put forward a collective
initiative of including in the agenda of the 59th session of the
UN General Assembly a point on announcing May 8-9 Days of Memory
and Reconciliation.

The presidents will be informed at the CIS summit about the progress
of the initiative.

The summit is to pass a decision on sending CIS observers to Ukraine’s
president elections and on declaring 2006 a year of memory of the
Chernobyl tragedy. The nuclear accident at Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear
power plant occurred on April 26, 1986.

Besides, the CIS presidents are to decide on sending observers of the
Commonwealth of Independent States to elections to the Belarussian
National Assembly’s house of representatives and to a referendum on
President Alexander Lukashenko’s running for the third term. Belarus
has proposed the observer missions.

One of items on the summit’s agenda is election of a chairman and
deputy chairman the CIS Economic Court.

The status of the court is laid down by an accord signed by Russia,
Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Uzbekistan and
Tajikistan in 1992. These states elect two judges each to the CIS
Economic Court based in the Belarussian capital Minsk.

Its judges are elected for ten years.

The chairman and deputy chairman of the Economic Court are elected
by the judges by a majority vote and approved by the CIS Council of
Heads of State for five years.

The main task of the Economic Court is to ensure universal use of
accords of CIS members.

In the opinion of experts, the Economic Court should become an
effective mechanism for promotion of free trade.

Russia, Armenia leaders meet in Astana

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 16, 2004 Thursday

ASTANA, September 16 — Russian President Vladimir Putin and Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan had a working meeting on Thursday. The
two leaders discussed bilateral cooperation.

They took part in the 38th CIS summit here on Thursday. Also on
Thursday, Putin had separate talks with Georgian President Mikhail
Saakashvili and Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev.

CIS leaders hope commonwealth reforms will yield good results
By Viktoria Sokolova

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 16, 2004 Thursday

ASTANA, September 16 — CIS leaders said Thursday they were expecting
the proposed commonwealth reforms to be effective, ensuring, among
other things, implementation of the decisions made.

Commenting at the news conference on the program of reforms, proposed
by the Kazakh president, Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko noted
that “the CIS lags behind in its dynamics of the basic indicators
of activity.”

“The commonwealth leaders should decide within a year on the main
thing: what they want the CIS to be. Having answered this question,
it is necessary to begin reforms,” Lukashenko said.

He expressed the hope that “the overhauled CIS will be an organization
where decisions on the key issues will be made and where they will
be implemented.”

Armenian President Robert Kocharyan thinks that the main objective of
the reform is to preserve the bodies, which work, and make the rest
redundant. “I don’t doubt that the CIS has a potential,” Kocharyan
said.

“The main thing is that all the decisions we make be implemented,”
Ukrainian leader Leonid Kuchma stated.

Nursultan Nazarbayev said the CIS leaders had instructed the foreign
ministries to consider and make a final decision on the proposed
reforms within a year. The reforms then will be discussed by the
CIS leaders.

The reforms envision the setting up of the CIS Security Council
comprising the foreign ministers, the defense ministers, and the
heads of the border services and law-enforcement agencies.

The Council of foreign ministers will be preserved. It will control
the Security Council’s work.

The Security Council, to be chaired on rotational basis, will be
directly subordinate to the Council of CIS leaders.

Following CIS bodies will be dissolved: the Council of CIS defense
ministers, its secretariat, the headquarters for coordinating
military cooperation and the respective councils. In addition, the
reform proposes to eliminate the Economic Court and the Inter-State
Statistics Committee.

The CIS executive committee will cut its staff from 220 to 140. The
chairman will have two deputies, while the number of the Committee’s
departments will be reduced from nine to five.

The commonwealth will set up a council of representative under the
Security and Economic Councils at the level of ambassadors who are to
be appointed by the heads of states. It will abolish the institute
of envoys under the Economic Council and the Commission on Economic
Issues in Moscow, as well as a number of other CIS councils and bodies.

“I’d like to note,” Nazarbayev said, “that the heads of states showed
little respect for the bodies that had been set up, normally sending
to work there pensioners or people who needed to land a job. This
approach did not ensure effective work of our CIS secretariat.”

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

EU to cooperate with Russia in settling Caucasian problems
By Alan Badov

ITAR-TASS News Agency
September 16, 2004 Thursday

ROME, September 16 — The European Union is ready to cooperate with
Russia in settling problems of the Caucasus and Transcaucasia, said
in Brussels on Thursday head of the European Commission Romano Prodi
in an interview with Italian reporters on the eve of his tour of
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

The European Union recognizes the important role Russia plays in
the Caucasus, Prodi noted. “Therefore, we should and are ready to
work together with Moscow to look for a solution of problems in the
region,” he continued. According to Prodi, the dreadful events in
Beslan have clearly shown that “instability spawns terrorism”.

Prodi will come to Baku on Thursday. During his tour of the
Transcaucasian republics, he will meet leaderships of those countries,
members of the public and religious quarters. In Prodi’s words,
links with the Transcaucasian countries are very important for the
European Union, since the region is rich in energy resources and is
located in the area of important transport routes.

Agency WPS
What the Papers Say. Part B (Russia)
September 16, 2004, Thursday

UKRAINE, KAZAKHSTAN, AND BELARUS: PROSPECTS OF UNIFICATION WITH
RUSSIA

SOURCE: Gazeta, September 16, 2004, pp. 1-2

by Pavel Aptekar

Addressing a summit of the Eurasian Economic Community in Astana,
Kazakhstan three months ago, President Vladimir Putin said, “Wise
people of all countries, unite.”

“Chauvinism, nationalism, personal ambitions of political
decision-makers, and simple, primitive stupidity” interfere with
integration, Putin said. He avoided any sharp statements at the
United Economic Zone summit yesterday (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and
Kazakhstan) even though the signing of the necessary documents has
been postponed by at least a year. Putin merely reminded CIS leaders
that establishment of the united Economic Zone could bring living
standards in the involved countries up to the European level.
Observers have many more hopes for Putin’s meetings with presidents
of Armenia and Azerbaijan and the authorities of Georgia.

The political establishment of the CIS gathered in Astana yesterday.
National leaders joined prime ministers and foreign ministers. Only
Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan and President Vladimir Voronin of
Moldova were absent. Today’s agenda for the CIS summit has been
revised: given the latest events in Russia, the summit will be
centered around the problem of terrorism.

Predictably enough, Putin, Leonid Kuchma, Nursultan Nazarbayev, and
Alexander Lukashenko postponed the decision to establish of the
United Economic Zone until July 1, 2005.

All the same, summit participants are quite optimistic. Kuchma is
convinced that the future United Economic Zone should become a center
of attraction for neighboring countries. “We have everything we need
for it,” said president of Ukraine. “Political stability alone is
needed.”

“A common financial system will be installed and operational 10 to 12
years from now,” Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan promised.

President Lukashenko of Belarus hopes that the common financial
system will be working even earlier than that, “God (or Allah)
willing.”

Still, Putin painted a particularly rosy picture. “Surpassing the
level of the average citizen of Europe in the sufficiently
foreseeable future is quite within grasp,” Putin said.

The negotiating parties agreed on some new integration initiatives.
Putin, Kuchma, Nazarbayev, and Lukashenko intend to ease border
crossing procedures for citizens of the countries comprising the
United Economic Zone and instructed their governments to draft
appropriate documents. There is no saying at this point how the
future accord will concur with the recent decree of the president of
Russia on the war on terrorism. The decree demands tighter procedures
of border crossing for citizens of CIS countries.

Nazarbayev’s idea of a space corporation was approved in Astana.
Governments of the four countries comprising the United Economic Zone
have before December 15 to formulate their proposals. Construction of
the Clipper, a manned shuttle, is to become the ultimate objective of
the corporation. With a crew of six, the Clipper is expected to
replace the Soyuz rocket family. Its design by the Energy Corporation
will be Russia’s contribution. Kuchma says that the Design Bureau
Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash factory will probably represent Ukraine in the
future corporation. Kazakhstan will provide the Baikonur, and Belarus
its “unique capacities in the sphere of optics.”

“This is going to be the first project leading to new ones in the
sphere of high-tech industry,” Nazarbayev said. Kuchma was more to
the point. “What we need is unification of specific capacities” to
enable the United Economic Zone to compete with the West in the
high-tech sphere, he said. Lukashenko was worried by the problem of
commercial competition too. “There are very many states in the World
Trade Organization whose goods are better than our counterparts in
quality and price,” he announced.

Actually, some lingering discord among participants in the future
United Economic Zone was undeniable. With a glance in Kuchma’s
direction, Lukashenko mentioned “a lack of political will” and added,
“If some country, say, Ukraine or Russia, joined the World Trade
Organization before the rest do, we can forget about the United
Economic Zone.”

Later that evening, Putin met with presidents of Azerbaijan and
Armenia Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharjan. Before that, Aliyev and
Kocharjan had a private conversation. Some experts tentatively assume
that the talks in Astana may provide a turning point in
Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. A lot of hopes are also placed on
Putin’s talks with President Mikhail Saakashvili of Georgia.

Translated by A. Ignatkin

The Guardian (London)
September 16, 2004

Anything goes: Wooden legs, slobs in love, Armenian menus… Alan
Plater on what makes a great jazz song

Mr Topsy-Turvy . . . Slim Gaillard, who played piano with his hands
upside-down

In 1923, at the Palais de Danse in Ladywood, Birmingham, 17-year-old
Lily Goodman from Cannon Hill broke the British record for marathon
dancing. She danced for 24 hours and five minutes, covered 68 miles,
used up two partners – Mr Harold Quiney and Mr R Webster-Grinling –
and 482 tunes. This was the inspiration for Lily’s Dancing Feat, a
swinging instrumental by reeds player Alan Barnes, which he performed
in the year 2000 as part of a Birmingham jazz festival programme. (I
introduced it: my job was to tell the stories behind the music and
divert the audience’s attention from the bar.) Another of Alan’s
pieces celebrated Peg-Leg Bates, a tap-dancer with a wooden leg, who
toured the UK in the 1950s with the Louis Armstrong All-Stars.

After hours, Alan and I discovered a mutual interest in writing songs
about unsung heroes like Lily and Peg-Leg, and places and
institutions largely neglected by the music industry. It was, as Eric
Morecambe might have said, like the moment when Gilbert met
O’Sullivan. Since then, we have celebrated fast food joints on the
A66, being in love with a slob, and the psychological complexities of
a vegan chicken.

A key element of our approach to songwriting is laughter, a quality
that doesn’t always sit comfortably in jazz clubs and concerts. The
larger-than-life exuberance of Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong and Dizzy
Gillespie, while adding enormously to the gaiety of nations, was
frequently victim of tut-tutting from some of our music’s most solemn
devotees. For years, the music of the US pianist/composer/ bandleader
Carla Bley was under-valued because of her triple error of being
political, a woman and funny.

This is odd, since jazz musicians themselves are legendary for their
relish of the comic and the absurd. The tenor player Zoot Sims, for
instance, following a US State Department tour of the Soviet Union
with the Benny Goodman band, was asked about the experience. He said:
“When you’re working for Benny, everywhere is the Soviet Union.” The
same Zoot Sims, watching the first moon landings in the back room at
Ronnie Scott’s in 1969, commented: “Imagine – we’ve got men on the
moon and I’m still playing Cherokee.”

Despite this attitude, many of the most original, inventive and witty
of performers tend to be marginalised and redirected to the cabaret
room: singer/pianists like Mose Allison, Bob Dorough, Blossom Dearie,
Dave Frishberg and our very own George Melly. The central stance is
one that Allison has defined, naturally enough, in song: “I’m another
little middle-class white boy who’s out to have some fun.” Allison
would be the first to acknowledge everyone’s debt to the great black
rhythm and blues singers like Louis Jordan and Wynonie Harris, and
the blissful surrealist Slim Gaillard, whose considerable oeuvre
includes Yep Roc Heresy, with lyrics taken from the menu of an
Armenian restaurant in New York.

In a long, colourful career, Slim invented a semi-private language
called Vout, was the centrepiece of a chapter in Jack Kerouac’s On
the Road, played Clair de Lune on the piano with his hands
upside-down and, with Down at the Station, could claim to be the only
jazz musician to contribute a genuine nursery rhyme to the children
of the world.

His early life – or legend, the two things being difficult to
disentangle – included time spent as a professional boxer, a
mortician and a truck-driver for bootleggers before going into
vaudeville as a tapdancing guitarist and singer. He became a handsome
young man about Hollywood (“They used to call me Dark Gable”), who in
his later years was a genial and benign presence at the Chelsea Arts
Club. Slim’s verbal gymastics concealed a serious and poetic
understanding of the music. Of the tenor player Lester Young, he once
said: “He played real quiet – like a rat walking on silk.”

Among the middle-class white kids, Dave Frishberg, an outstanding
jazz pianist by any standards, has contributed many of the definitive
songs to the canon, from I’m Hip, co-written with Dorough, a guide to
being cool in a square world, to My Attorney Bernie, a sardonic hymn
to the American legal profession:

“Bernie tells me what to do

Bernie lays it on the line

Bernie says we sue, we sue

Bernie says we sign, we sign

On the dotted line.”

Frishberg’s announcements reflect the same sweet-and-sour attitude.
“I have reached that time of life when everything gets worse,” he’ll
say, before drifting into a song bemoaning such footnotes to life as
unwanted changes to the rules of baseball. With the seriousness of a
true clown, he also wrote Dear Bix, an exquisite tribute to the great
Beiderbecke.

This isn’t, and never will be, mainstream music, but it is a lovely
tributary where writers, musicians and audiences can splash about,
irritate the grown-ups and have a lot of fun. That’s pretty much what
Alan Barnes and I have been doing this past couple of years, enabling
Liz Fletcher to sing our hymns to the unnoticed, the unwanted even
the unwashed – not to mention a tenor saxophonist who’s still playing
Cherokee.

(C) Alan Plater. His Songs for Unsung Heroes is out now on Woodville
Records. It will be presented as part of the Scarborough jazz
festival on Saturday. Box office: 01723 376774.

EU READY TO WORK WITH RUSSIA IN CAUCASUS

ANSA English Media Service
September 16, 2004

BRUSSELS

(ANSA) – BRUSSELS, September 16 – The European Union recognises the
important role of Russia in the Caucasus and the EU must be ready and
is ready to work with Moscow in finding a solution to the problems
in the area, the president of the European Commission, Romano Prodi
told Italian news agency ANSA on Thursday.

Prodi said that the terrible events in Beslan at the beginning of
the September showed that terrorism feeds on instability.

Prodi will leave on a mission to South Caucasus, where he will meet
major political leaders from the civil and religious society of
Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

Prodi’s trip, which ends on Sunday, has the objective of developing the
neighbouring policy that the EU intends to have with the countries at
the borders of the EU and in this case it would push itself further
because the area is a scene of grave turmoil. The recent history
of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia is hovering between democratic
development and authoritarianism.

According to Prodi the EU can help these countries develop economically
and politically, by starting a dialogue with them, which it hopes
would be easier than what Russia and the USA can do, because they
have a more aggressive policy and stronger interests.

The president of the EC reminded that these countries have energy
products and that they are economically important because they are
situated in a strategic area. (ANSA). (MD/krc)

Azeri, Armenian leaders vow to keep up talks on envlave stand-off

Agence France Presse — English
September 16, 2004 Thursday 7:31 AM GMT

ASTANA Sept 16 — The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan on Thursday
promised to keep up dialogue on the bitter stand-off between their
countries over the enclave of Nagorno-Karabach.

Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Robert Kocharian of Armenia
held more than three hours of late-night talks in the Kazakh capital
mediated by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, but gave few clues as
to what had passed between them.

“We need time — the president of Azerbaijan knows our position
more concretely — the process is continuing in a constructive way,”
Kocharian said at a joint news conference with Aliyev.

“Further development can resolve this question — we discussed various
questions on the path to a resolution,” Aliyev said.

Aliyev had earlier stressed the importance of Thursday’s talks over
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which saw the two neighbours fight a
war in the early 1990s and which remains unresolved.

Aliyev has faced calls in his home country to take a bolder stand
on the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and the thousands of Azeris who have
fled the disputed area.

International mediators had been urging face-to-face meetings between
the two sides, which had faltered during the transition of power in
Azerbaijan from Aliyev’s father Heidar.

In the early 1990s ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous
territory wedged between Armenia and Azerbaijan, declared their
independence from Azeri rule.

A war followed in which the separatists, with help from Armenia, forced
out Azeri troops and took de facto control of the enclave. The war left
about 30,000 people dead and forced over a million to flee their homes.

Though a ceasefire was signed in 1994, the war has never been
declared over and Azerbaijan has repeatedly threatened to use force
to re-establish its control over Nagorno-Karabakh.