Peace team plan for Karabakh

HELSINKI (Agencies) - The Conference on Security and Co- operation in Europe is prepared to send its first peace monitoring mission to Azerbaijan's Nagorny Karabakh region, officials said yesterday.

Eight nations have offered to send unarmed observers. According to Western diplomatic sources, the CSCE leaders also agreed to send fact-finding teams to trouble spots in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia.

Nursultan Nazarbayev, the President of Kazakhstan, told the CSCE that the provisions of the Helsinki Final Act, first signed in 1975, should be exported to the east. The US President, George Bush, met Eduard Shevardnadze, the former Soviet foreign minister who now heads Georgia's ruling council, to discuss the conflict in south Ossetia between Georgia and break-away separatists.