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By Ruzanna Stepanian<\/span><\/p>\n Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday publicly offered to host the next meeting between his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts which international mediators hope will produce a breakthrough in their protracted efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that we are at an advanced stage,\u201d Medvedev said during an official visit to Yerevan, commenting on the current state of the Karabakh peace process spearheaded by Russia, the United States and France.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that the three presidents will meet very soon to continue discussions on this theme,\u201d he said. \u201cI hope that the meeting will take place in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n The American, French and Russian co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group have been pressing the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to meet in the coming weeks and iron out their remaining differences on a framework peace accord proposed by them last year. \u201cOur understanding is that such meetings will take place shortly after the forthcoming [October 15] presidential elections in Azerbaijan,\u201d Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier this month.<\/p>\n Speaking at a joint news conference with Medvedev after their talks, President Serzh Sarkisian reiterated that the proposed peace deal is on the whole acceptable to the Armenian side because it upholds the Karabakh Armenians\u2019 right to self-determination. \u201cThe main thing is that we believe the conflict can be resolved by mutual compromise and by means of negotiations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Medvedev said he and Sarkisian discussed the Karabakh conflict \u201cin detail\u201d but did not comment on chances of its near-term resolution, saying only that \u201cboth sides are ready to look for solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n The two leaders also discussed the broader security situation in the region in the aftermath of Russia\u2019s recent war in Georgia as well as Russian-Armenian economic relations. The latter issue was the main theme of a separate Medvedev-Sarkisian session that was attended by members of the Russian-Armenian inter-governmental commission on economic cooperation.<\/p>\n The commission met in Yerevan on Monday. Medvedev noted the fact that Russia remains Armenia\u2019s number one trading partner.<\/p>\n According to Armenia\u2019s National Statistical Service, the volume of Russian-Armenian trade rose by almost 20 percent year-on-year to $482.4 million in the first eight months of this year. The figure is equivalent to 14.65 percent of Armenia\u2019s overall foreign trade turnover registered in this period.<\/p>\n \u201cOur current economic relations are impressive but tend to lag behind our political relations,\u201d Sarkisian said, calling for the launch \u201clarge-scale joint projects.\u201d He said he and Medvedev discussed potential Russian involvement in two such projects: the planned construction of a new Armenian nuclear plant and an Armenia-Iran railway.<\/p>\n Medvedev said Moscow \u201cwill do everything to strengthen and develop our strategic partnership\u201d with Armenia as he and Sarkisian inaugurated a square in central Yerevan named after Russia earlier in the day. \u201cI am convinced that coordinated actions in the international arena is a serious factor of security and strengthening of our positions both in the Caucasus region and the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cToday this square is becoming yet another symbol of loyalty to the traditions of centuries-old brotherhood and spiritual kinship between our peoples,\u201d Sarkisian said during the ceremony.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 By Ruzanna Stepanian Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday publicly offered to host the next meeting between his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts which international mediators hope will produce a breakthrough in their protracted efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. \u201cI hope that we are at an advanced stage,\u201d Medvedev said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,41,42],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-5827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-azerbaijan","category-russia","tag-nagorno-karabakh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}