On July 4, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Aliyev called on the United States to help solve the Karabakh dispute.

"We want to find a resolution as soon as possible," he told Clinton ahead of their closed-door meeting.

Clinton acknowledged that the issue was "of importance" to Washington but did not elaborate, RFE/RL reported.

She will travel later the same day to Armenia, where she is also expected to push for a restart of peace talks over Nagorno Karabakh.

The U.S. secretary of state is in Azerbaijan on the third stop of a five-nation tour of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.