Georgia urges Armenia, Azerbaijan to start dialogue

Georgia has held a Security Council meeting on Saturday to discuss the conflict raging between its neighbours Armenia and Azerbaijan over the breakaway region of Nagorno Karabakh.

The situation has a serious negative impact on regional security and economic development, the statement issued after the meeting said.

Since the escalation of the conflict, the government of Georgia has temporarily suspended the issuing of permits for the transition of military cargo through its territory in the direction of both countries.

President Salome Zurabishvili urged the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk group to take all necessary measures to stop the violence and resume dialogue.

Georgia has offered to host a meeting of representatives of the conflicting sides in Tbilisi.

Armenia and Azerbaijan said heavy fighting continued in their conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, with Azerbaijan's president criticising international mediators who have tried for decades to resolve the dispute.

Both nations have been locked for decades in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, where a separatist war was fought in the early 1990s until three years after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The region in the Caucasus Mountains of about 4,400 square kilometers (1,700 square miles), roughly the size of the US state of Delaware, is 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the Armenian border.

It has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces and the Armenian military since the 1994 end of a full-scale separatist war that killed about 30,000 people and displaced an estimated 1 million.

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