World Notes NEGOTIATIONS

Armenians and Azerbaijanis finally sat down to discuss their differences last week, but not on their own turf. Instead representatives from the two Soviet republics gathered in Riga, the capital of Latvia. Leaders of the Azerbaijani Popular Front and the Armenian National Movement accepted a call from their Baltic counterparts to open talks on their two years of violent clashes. Emerging from the first session, both groups agreed to seek the release of all hostages by March 1 and to establish permanent relations between the two groups. No speedy peace settlement is expected, if only because the Azerbaijanis refused to discuss the future of Nagorno-Karabakh, the center of the dispute. Even so, the multifront meeting illustrates a dramatic shift of power from Moscow into the hands of local nationalists.