Azernews.Az

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has said commenting on a recent meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian intellectuals in Moscow which discussed the Nagorno Karabakh conflict that the best policy for any country is a political course based on good neighborliness ties.

"Such meetings are important in terms of further strengthening good-neighborly relations. The more such meetings are held, the sooner it will be possible to bring peace to the region," Mammadyarov told a press conference Friday.

Mammadyarov said the negotiations on Nagorno Karabakh continue and the mediating OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will arrive in the region during the second week of March to discuss further steps.

"We believe that peace and stability will soon come to the region," Mammadyarov said.

The meeting of intellectuals, held on Wednesday, was attended by the Azerbaijani and Armenian ambassadors to Russia, university principals and men of culture of the two countries. The discussions aimed to promote establishment of humanitarian relations, in accord with the decision made during the trilateral meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia on January 23 in the Russian city of Sochi.

Azerbaijan and Armenia, its neighbor in the South Caucasus region, fought a brutal war in the early 1990s. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including the Nagorno Karabakh region, has been under the occupation of Armenian armed forces since a fragile ceasefire was signed in 1994. Peace talks, brokered by US, Russian and French mediators through the OSCE Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.

This story is published by AzerNEWS Weekly under a project funded by the Foundation for State Assistance to the Development of the Media under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic.