Azeri, Armenia hold "serious" talks on Karabakh

CHISINAU (Reuters) - The presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia held constructive talks on the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh on Thursday and will meet again soon, a U.S. envoy said.

Success in the talks in the Moldovan capital is seen as key to easing the way for restoring relations between Christian Armenia and Muslim Turkey to end a century of hostility.

U.S. ambassador Robert Bradtke said the meeting between Azeri President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia's Serzh Sarksyan continued "a positive dynamic in the discussions" on the future of the mountainous enclave.

"The discussions were serious and constructive. They have agreed to meet again in the near future," Bradtke, who appeared alongside envoys from Russia and France, told reporters.

But there was no word on the substance of the talks.

Violence erupted in the mountainous territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan's internationally recognized borders, in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union headed toward its 1991 collapse.

Ethnic Armenian forces, backed by Armenia, drove out Azeri troops and took control of seven districts of Azerbaijan adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh.

Some 30,000 people were killed in the war and many more people displaced.

Russian ambassador Yuri Merzlyakov said the next meeting between the two presidents would be "relatively soon."

Both men were to stay on in Chisinau on Friday when they will meet Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as part of a summit of ex-Soviet republics within the Commonwealth of Independent States.

It was not clear if they would hold a second round of face-to-face talks on Karabakh then.

EASE TENSION

Analysts said the outcome of Thursday's talks in Chisinau was important in terms of a scheduled meeting in Zurich on Saturday when Armenia and Turkey are scheduled to sign an accord to normalize ties.

The hostility between the two nations dates back to mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman forces in World War One.

Turkey broke off diplomatic relations and closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in solidarity with its ally Azerbaijan.

An agreement to normalize ties and open the border would bolster Turkey's credentials as a modernizer in the West, boost the poverty-stricken economy of landlocked Armenia and improve security in the South Caucasus, a transit corridor for oil and gas to the West.

Merzlyakov said the Zurich meeting between Armenia and Turkey did not figure in the Chisinau talks. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is to attend the Zurich ceremony.

French envoy Bernard Fassier said the work of the Minsk group, which comprises the United States, Russia and France and sponsors international efforts to find a Karabakh settlement, was "without links to other processes."

Aliyev and Sarksyan have much to lose at home if they are seen to make concessions over the emotive issue of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Both men looked tense as they posed for cameras at the start of the talks which were held at the residence of the U.S. ambassador and lasted nearly 3 1/2 hours.

A Turkish parliamentarian, speaking ahead of the talks, said it would be difficult to secure parliamentary approval in Turkey for any normalization of ties with Armenia if the talks on Karabakh did not show progress.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Tanas in Chisinau and Pinar Aydinli and Ibon Villelabeitia in Ankara)

(Writing by Richard Balmforth; Editing by Jon Hemming)