USA: Lavrov chairs Nagorno-Karabakh meeting after violence breaks out in region

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov conducted talks with the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, in New York on Saturday. "I’m glad to have this opportunity to touch base and see what we can do additionally to the already undertaken steps to move the Nagorno-Karabakh agreement forward," Lavrov said. The meeting comes days after four Armenian soldiers were killed by Azeri forces, near the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region, in a fresh outbreak of violence. Fighting along the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and around Nagorno-Karabakh, which resides in Azerbaijan but is mostly controlled by ethnic Armenians, has raised fears of a larger conflict breaking out in the Southern Caucasus, which is the location of numerous oil and gas pipelines. Bouts of violence between the neighbouring countries have undermined international efforts to end the territorial dispute. The fighting broke out in the last years of the Soviet Union and has so far claimed the lives of 30,000 people.