Azerbaijan

In order to give impetus to the negotiations since April 1999, the direct meetings between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents began in order to achieve the solution to the conflict. At these meetings the Minsk Group co-chairs also supported by the mediation. Presidents mainly came together at the international meetings. The first such meeting was held in Washington on April 24, 1999, at summit of 50th anniversary of NATO. Participating in that summit, Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia Heydar Aliyev and Robert Kocharian met with the mediation of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. After this meeting a series of meetings of Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders connected with the settlement of Karabakh began.

During this period, the political situation in Armenia was not stable. In May 1999 at parliamentary elections in Armenia, the Karabakh issue was the subject of a major political speculation.

On July 16, 1999 in Geneva, Switzerland at Jateu castle a meeting held between the Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents Heydar Aliyev and Robert Kocharian. Namely with this high-level meeting the Karabakh negotiations had entered an intensive phase. The next meeting in Aliyev-Kocharian format again took place on August 22, 1999 in Geneva.

On October 26, 1999, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Telbott arrived in Yerevan and then to Baku for discussion the situation around Nagorno-Karabakh negotiations. That was an intensive round of Karabakh peace talks and it was expected to sign some agreement in November at the OSCE Istanbul Summit.

However, on October 27 the terroristic act in the Armenian parliament brought to zero all peace possibilities. At the terrorist act the armed group led by Nairi Unanian had killed at parliament, Armenian Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsian, chairman of the parliament Karen Demirchian, government members and 6 deputies of the parliament. This terroristic act, which paralyzed the internal political situation in Armenia and which customers were still unknown, actually stopped 

the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.