Fars News Agency, Iran
July 2 2011

Speaker Urges Negotiated Solution to Karabakh Dispute

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani renewed Iran’s
call for a negotiated solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute between
Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Speaking to reporters in the Azeri capital city of Baku on Saturday,
Larijani pointed to the failure of the recent trilateral negotiations
between Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh
dispute, and said he and the Azeri officials have discussed the issue
in their meetings.

“We have always defended Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity in all
solutions to the dispute, and given the current circumstance in the
region we recommend that the issue be solved through negotiations,”
Larijani noted.

He stressed that Iran is suspicious of the powerful countries’
attitude and performance in the region since they are seeking their
own interests, and added, “Therefore, we believe that it is more
logical to pursue regional solutions to the Karabakh dispute.”

Russian President Dmitry Medvede’s latest trilateral negotiations with
Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev
were held in the Russian city of Kazan on June 24.

Despite facing strong international pressure, the Armenian and
Azerbaijani leaders failed to agree on the basic principles of ending
the Karabakh conflict put forward by Russia, the United States, and
France.

The Kazan meeting was the ninth Armenian-Azerbaijani summit hosted by
Medvedev in the last three years.

In November 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced
Tehran’s readiness to help resolve the territorial dispute between
Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

“We believe that the Karabakh issue will be resolved through dialogue
and the commitment of both sides to justice, and Tehran is ready to
negotiate with them within this framework,” Ahmadinejad said in a
joint press conference with his Azeri counterpart at the time.

Armenia and Azerbaijan remain officially at war over Karabakh and the
dispute is a major source of tension in the South Caucasus region
wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey.

No country – not even Armenia – officially recognizes Karabakh as an
independent state.

The rebel region has been controlled by ethnic Armenians since it
broke free of Baku’s control after a fierce war in the early 1990s
that killed 30,000 people.