AZERBAIJANI, ARMENIAN PRESIDENTS TO DISCUSS KARABAKH SETTLEMENT.

Azerbaijani president Heydar Aliyev will hold a bilateral meeting with Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosian to discuss proposals for settling the Karabakh conflict, aides to Aliyev said yesterday. The meeting is expected to take place during or before the CIS summit scheduled for January 19 in Moscow. The two presidents will consider the withdrawal of troops from "occupied" Azeri territories, establishment of disengagement zones, deployment of international peacekeeping troops, the return of Azeri refugees to their homes, the political status of Karabakh, security guarantees for its Armenian population, and the disposition of the Lachin corridor. (16)

Last week’s Azerbaijan-Armenia-Karabakh talks in Moscow, mediated by the Russian and Finnish co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk conference, inched forward on certain of the issues to be discussed at the bilateral meeting. On the vexing issue of Lachin, the conferees considered either renting the corridor to Armenia or swapping it for a portion of Karabakh territory. Both options are attempts to reconcile the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the inviolability of its borders with security guarantees for Karabakh’s Armenians. The Moscow session also discussed the possible deployment of some 4,000 international peacekeeping troops, including Russian troops, under OSCE auspices. (17)

Tajik Opposition Activists Pardoned.