MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Earlier in the day, Aliyev held a meeting with Rouhani in Baku. The meeting took place ahead of the Russian-Iranian-Azerbaijani summit, which is expected to take place on Monday.
"I informed my Iranian counterpart of details about the latest situation around the Karabakh settlement. Nagorno-Karabakh originally is an Azerbaijani territory. Besides Karabach, seven other surrounding territories have been occupied. Mosques are destroyed, there are refugees and internally displaced people. The withdrawal of occupation troops from Azerbaijani territories is necessary to settle the conflict," Aliyev was quoted as saying by APA news agency.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in a dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh since 1988, when the autonomous region left the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic and proclaimed independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The secession triggered a war that lasted until a Russia-brokered ceasefire was signed in 1994.
On April 2, tensions in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population, escalated. Baku and Yerevan accused each other of provoking the hostilities, however, the sides succeeded in reaching a ceasefire agreement on April 5, which has been followed by near-daily reports of truce violations.
