World Bulletin / News Desk

France’s Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, the co-chairman of the OSCE’s Minsk group on Nagorno-Karabkah, has accepted Thursday an invitation from Azerbaijan to visit Baku in the near future.

Neither Paris nor Baku have specified a date for the visit.

The invitation came during a meeting in Paris between Ayrault and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov.

According to Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry, Ayrault and Mammadyarov discussed the results of a Vienna meeting on Monday between Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s President Serzh Sarkisian.

The two presidents confirmed the importance of maintaining a cease-fire between Azerbaijani troops and separatist ethnic Armenian forces in Azerbaijan’s breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Aliyev and Sarkisian also said they would work to restore negotiations toward a political settlement over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which in early April saw its worst outbreak of fighting since a 1994 cease-fire deal.

Mammadyarov praised France for working to organize another meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia as soon as possible.