Russia : Lavrov's meeting with Azerbaijani, Armenian FM not confirmed yet
By Laman Ismayilova
Russia keeps the issue of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict under a special control and does everything to return the parties of the conflict to the settlement process in case of escalation of the situation.
Spokeswoman of Russia’s Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova announced about this at a briefing on July 6.
Russia along with the U.S. and France is a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.
Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.
Zakharova further added that it is not yet known whether Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will meet with Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers at the OSCE Informal Ministerial Meeting in Austria’s Mauerbach town on July 11.
Previously RIA Novosti reported citing a diplomatic source that the two countries’ foreign ministers are offered to meet during the OSCE Informal Ministerial Meeting in Austria.
“The mediators for settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are also expected to participate in the meeting,” the source said.
Last time, Mammadyarov and Nalbandian met in Moscow on April 28 within a trilateral meeting with the Russian Foreign Minister. The ministers continued discussions on prospects for the progress of the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and stressed the need to implement the agreements reached at the summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg in 2016.
Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.
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