Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev meets Turkey's foreign and defence ministers

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev met Turkey's foreign and defence ministers in Baku on Tuesday to discuss the agreement to halt the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The meeting came as Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia signed the agreement to end more than a month of fighting.

Aliyev stressed the importance of the timely establishment of a peacekeeping centre involving Russian and Turkish peacekeepers.

"We have always wanted Turkey and Russia to play an equal role in the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and today we have achieved this," he declared.

Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan but has been under the control of ethnic Armenian forces backed by Armenia since a separatist war there ended in 1994.

Heavy fighting erupted in late September - the biggest escalation of the conflict in a quarter-century - and has left hundreds, possibly thousands, dead.