Russia: Venue for Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents' meeting yet to be determined
By Rashid Shirinov
Russian Foreign Ministry rejected the media reports saying that the next meeting of the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia would be held in Moscow.
The venue for a meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan, has not been yet determined, Artem Kozhin, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Information and Press Department, said at a briefing on July 20.
He said that reports, earlier published in the Izvestia newspaper with reference to a source in Russia's Foreign Ministry saying that the next meeting of the two presidents would be held in Moscow, is inaccurate.
“We noticed the article in Izvestia and we would like to point to factual inaccuracies in the publication,” noted Kozhin.
During the consultations of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, it was proposed to organize a meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents by the end of this year, he said, adding that the place of the meeting was not discussed in detail.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, 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.
While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the 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.
Baku has repeatedly expressed its consent to come to the negotiating table with Yerevan to solve the conflict by peaceful means, but Armenia continues to play for time and avoids substantive negotiations in order to preserve the inadmissible status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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