 "Russia, Armenia, Azerbaijan to restore transportation in Nagorno-Karabakh")
Leaders of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to take joint measures to restore transportation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region recently freed from armed conflict.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan issued a statement on these measures following their talks in Moscow on Monday, Xinhua news agency reported.
According to the statement, the three countries will set up a trilateral working group co-chaired by their Deputy Prime Ministers to ensure that all economic and transport connections in Nagorno-Karabakh will be unblocked, part of the fourth ceasefire deal reached on November 9, 2020.
The working group will hold its first meeting before January 30 to make a list of key areas of work, with railway and road links as the priority.
Under the working group, expert sub-groups will be established to determine projects together with the necessary resources and activities for their implementation.
By March 1, the working group will come up with a detailed plan for the restoration and construction of infrastructure necessary for safe transportation in the region.
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After the fourth ceasefire agreement was signed, Putin had said the Azerbaijani and Armenian sides would maintain the positions that they held and Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to the region.
The three other ceasefires -- two brokered by Russia (October 10, 17) and one by the US (October 26) -- collapsed after Armenia and Azerbaijan traded accusations and attacks.
A new round of armed conflict broke out on September 27 along the contact line of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan but mostly governed by the Republic of Artsakh, a de facto independent state with an Armenian ethnic majority.
Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over the region in 1988-94, eventually declaring a ceasefire.
However, a settlement was never reached.
--IANS
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