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President Vladimir Putin: Dear colleagues, first of all I would like to thank you for your willingness to meet once again here in Kazakhstan, a friendly land for each of us. The issue we are dealing with is a very complex one and we are all well aware that a great deal is always expected from your meetings and also that the problem at hand is very serious, serious for the peoples of both your countries and for both of you personally. But it is very heartening to see that despite these difficulties, you remain optimistic, pursue the desire to settle this issue, and, what is very important in my opinion, you strive to maintain dialogue and relations at a personal level. Without these relations it would impossible to settle anything at all.

Our meeting today clearly rejoins the efforts made by the OSCE’s Minsk Group, and I am pleased to note that prior to this meeting now we were in discussion with our colleagues. I would like to thank you for agreeing to meet in this format and I am sure that no matter what we reach agreement on today, no matter what you reach agreement on today, a personal meeting between the leaders of the two countries concerned is always a step forward. If you are not moving forward, then you are moving backward, and we must only move forward. I therefore welcome this meeting and I hope that it will not prove of no use and pass unnoticed, but rather, that it will contribute to settling the complicated issues we face.

President Robert Kocharian: The President of Azerbaijan and I had an interesting conversation that followed on from the discussion we had in Warsaw. The first meeting was introductory in nature and the second was more specific. I think that our ministers began working more objectively between the second and third meetings. Now we can give more details on the nature of the meeting and the questions discussed.

Vladimir Putin: All of our colleagues who are involved in this process give you their sincere encouragement. The last time I spoke with the President of Azerbaijan was when he was on a visit to Germany and we spoke by phone. I would like to thank you for having agreed to meet here in Astana in this format.

President Ilham Aliev: Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, for your involvement in this issue. As our neighbour and as co-chair of the Minsk Group, Russia is playing a very important part in settling the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorny Karabakh. We are very grateful to you for your participation and involvement. We have discussed this issue at all our meetings, have exchanged views, and we have always strived for one objective, and that is to bring peace to our region as quickly as possible. We hope that our future talks will be productive.