President Serzh Sargsyan has officially responded to his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev’s proposals on how to end the current impasse in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process, his office said yesterday. Officials at the presidential press office refused to disclose the content of the reply. It was also unclear whether Sargsyan communicated it in writing, as Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev did. Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov handed a corresponding letter from Aliyev to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov during their meeting in Moscow on Jul 18. Neither minister elaborated on the letter at a joint news conference held after the talks. Medvedev made those unpublicized proposals after failing to broker an Armenian-Azerbaijani framework agreement at the last Aliyev-Sarkisian meeting which was hosted by him in the Russian city of Kazan late last month. The move was part of broader international efforts to salvage the peace process. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton phoned the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents before the U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group visited Baku and Yerevan earlier this week.
