(RIA Novosti) - The co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group from Russia, France and the United States, as well as the personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office are arriving in the Armenian capital of Yerevan on Friday.

Yury Merzlyakov, Bernard Fassier, Robert Bradtke and Andrzej Kasprzyk are scheduled to meet with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian to discuss preparation of a new meeting between Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev on the Nagorny Karabakh conflict.

Nagorny Karabakh, an enclave inside Azerbaijan with a predominantly ethnic Armenian population, has been a source of conflict between the former Soviet republics since the late 1980s. The province has its own government and is de facto independent.

The war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the mountainous enclave in 1988-1994 left an estimated 35,000 people dead. Sporadic violence on the border has continued ever since.

The conflict is mediated by the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, comprising the U.S., Russia and France.

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