Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov met with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on May 21 during his two-day visit to Russia, with the talks focusing on issues that included Azerbaijan's long-standing conflict with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

"The status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable," Minister Lavrov said at a joint press conference with the Azerbaijani minister, Rossiya (Russia) 24 TV channel reported.

He said "nobody needs to be convinced of this."

Lavrov noted that Russia -- a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group brokering the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process -- intends to continue contributing to the conflict settlement.

"Stability in the region is very important for Russia," Lavrov said. "We have played a very active role in resolving the conflict and are trying to advance a settlement in a variety of formats. As co-chairs we continue working hard to find a compromise between the parties to the conflict."

Lavrov said the challenge is to shift the common ground reached on the conflict settlement principles "into the practical realm".

"We will do everything we can to create the conditions for a solution of this problem," the Russian FM said.

The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, for his part, said Baku hopes that the stagnation in the process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution will be overcome.

"Moscow and Baku considered the agenda of Russian-Azerbaijani relations and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the biggest problem that Azerbaijan faced," Mammadyarov said.

According to him, it is necessary to redouble the efforts to address this difficult, but resolvable conflict.

"The relations between Azerbaijan and Russia are very positive in terms of different areas. In terms of bilateral relations and from the economic point of view, our relations are developing incrementally, in accordance with the agreement on strategic partnership signed by the leaders of Azerbaijan and Russia in 2008, and we are acting within the frames of that document," Mammadyarov said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions. The UN Security Council has adopted four resolutions on Armenia's withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but Armenia has not followed them to this day.

Russia, along with France and the U.S., two other co-chairs of the Minsk Group, have long been working to broker a solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but their efforts have been largely fruitless so far.