The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia support the "basic principles" of a proposed plan to resolve the two countries' long struggle over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov announced on January 26.
But Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also identified areas where they disagree on the Madrid Principles, the Karabakh peace blueprint developed by the United States, Russia and France, the RIA Novosti news agency reported. Sargsyan and Aliyev met January 25 in the Russian Black Sea city of Sochi for a summit with Russia's President Dmitri Medvedev.
Sargsyan and Aliyev went home to work on more amendments to the peace blueprint, which has already been reworked several times since it was signed in 2007, the Armenian Panorama news service reported.
Russia's Novaya Gazeta reported on January 26 that Medvedev and Sargsyan tried to convince Aliyev to allow separatist Nagorno-Karabakh officials to participate in the talks. Representatives from the de facto Karabakh government were removed from the negotiations in 1998 at Azerbaijan's insistence.
