Azernews.Az

BAKU – An Azerbaijani presidential aide has said the expected talks on the Nagorno Karabakh conflict between President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan did not take place on the sidelines of the OSCE summit in Astana this week as Baku deemed it "unnecessary" and doubted it would move the peace process forward.

Novruz Mammadov, head of the Presidential Administration international relations department, told the Baku-based ANS TV channel that "meeting for the sake of just meeting is not in line with the Azerbaijani president’s principles", which President Aliyev has always complied with.

"A meeting makes sense only if there will be a result, if it’s important. You should go to a meeting with something at hand. There was no need to hold a meeting there [in Astana]. Simply, it is necessary to talk about a given issue, to move forward, to make decisions. If this is not expected, what’s the point of meeting then?"

According to Mammadov, Armenian President Sargsyan appeared concerned that the meeting with the Azerbaijani leader had not taken place.

"He was extremely worried. The meeting’s not taking place was some kind of a negative development for him. It looked as if he sat on a thorn."

Mammadov reminded that though a presidential meeting was not held in Astana, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia and the mediating countries’ senior officials had issued a joint statement.

"The issues reflected in this statement will further curb Armenia’s non-constructive role in the conflict settlement," he said.

The Nagorno Karabakh conflict was discussed at the OSCE summit, which took place December 1-2 for the first time in the past 11 years. The statement, issued by Presidents Aliyev and Sargsyan jointly with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, said "the time has come for more decisive efforts" to resolve the Karabakh conflict.

Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov has said "political and conceptual reasons" were behind the failed presidential meeting.

"The conceptual reason is that Baku does not see a fresh view on the Karabakh conflict on the Armenian side.

"On the other hand, since the presidents of the United States and France – two of the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group mediating peace talks – did not join the summit, the Russian president did not deem it necessary to arrange presidential meeting with officials holding lower positions."

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the signing of a cease-fire in 1994, but Armenia continues to occupy Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent Azerbaijani districts in defiance of international law. Years of peace talks have brought few tangible results.