Armenian Ambassador Armen Smbatian and Azerbaijani Ambassador Polad Byulbyulogly, together with a group of cultural figures and academics from both countries, traveled on June 28 first to Nagorno-Karabakh and thence to Yerevan.

In Stepanakert, the group met with Karabakh President Arkady Ghukasian, who was quoted as saying that all disputed issues should be resolved at the negotiating table, and nothing can be resolved by a new war.

Armenian President Robert Kocharian received the delegation in Yerevan, where he welcomed the initiative as contributing to an "atmosphere of mutual trust," and his Azerbaijani counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, received the delegation in Baku, where he reaffirmed that any solution to the Karabakh conflict must respect Azerbaijan's territorial integrity.

The visits mark a warming in relations between the two countries, which have been locked in a bitter dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh. That predominantly ethnic Armenian enclave broke away from Azerbaijan in 1988, triggering six years of fighting that killed more than 30,000 people.

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