President Dmitry Medvedev sought to underline Russia's influence in the Caucasus yesterday by bringing together the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia for talks on the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno-Karabakh's mostly ethnic Armenian population broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed. It now runs its own affairs, with support from Armenia.

Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan and his Azeri counterpart, Ilham Aliyev, hastily shook hands before Mr Medvedev opened talks at the Meiendorf Castle official residence outside Moscow.

After the talks, all three Presidents signed a declaration.

"The Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to continue work... on agreeing a political resolution of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh," according to a copy of the declaration, which was read out by Mr Medvedev. Mr Aliyev and Mr Sarksyan made no comment.

The war between Russia and Georgia in August appears to have lent new impetus to diplomatic efforts to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, with Russia trying to show it can act as a broker for "frozen conflicts" in the former Soviet Union.

Georgia sent troops and tanks in August to retake the pro-Russian rebel region of South Ossetia, which threw off Tbilisi's rule in 1991-92.

Russia responded with a powerful counter-strike that drove the Georgian army out of South Ossetia. Moscow then recognised South Ossetia and another of Georgia's rebel regions as independent states, provoking international condemnation.