BAKU, Azerbaijan, April 24
By Elchin Mehdiyev – Trend:
The attitude of Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan to the statement voiced by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov concerning the negotiations to resolve the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict during the video conference on April 21 is a provocation, Head of the Azerbaijani Parliamentary Committee on International and Inter-Parliamentary Relations Samad Seyidov said.
Seyidov made the remark at the meeting of the Azerbaijani parliament, Trend reports on April 24.
“It is necessary to take measures so that it would be the last Armenian provocation,” the committee head added. “The international organizations know that Armenia will do everything to maintain the status quo. Armenia committed all crimes against humanity for the occupation of lands to be continued and the status quo to be maintained."
The head of the committee emphasized that Armenia is fully responsible for the violation of the negotiation process.
“The OSCE Minsk Group has expressed its attitude towards this issue,” Seyidov added. “Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev also openly declared his position: “Karabakh is Azerbaijan!”.
“No international organization has recognized the so-called "election" held in the occupied Azerbaijani lands,” the head of the committee added. "President Ilham Aliyev put an end to another Armenian attempt to hold talks in trilateral format at the Munich Security Conference.”
Seyidov suggested holding hearings on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in parliamentary committees by inviting the representatives of Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry to these hearings.
Speaker of the Azerbaijani parliament Sahiba Gafarova said that the proposal will be taken into account.
Earlier, answering Trend's question during the briefing, Russian foreign minister Lavrov stressed that of course, the UN Security Council’s resolutions on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are the well-known documents.
"They were adopted at the height of the hostilities, and envisaged, first of all, the complete cessation of hostilities and switching to the conflict settlement,” the Russian foreign minister added. “They confirmed the territorial integrity of the Azerbaijan Republic.”
“But they also demanded to stop the war and start negotiations,” Lavrov said. “Since then, the negotiations have started more than once. There were agreements in 2001 and subsequent agreements in different formats.”
“So far, the format of negotiations has already been established with Baku, Yerevan, the OSCE Minsk Group represented by three co-chairs and the personal representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office,” the Russian foreign minister added. “The format is useful and good. This format reflects the requirement of the UN Security Council about the necessity to end the war and begin to negotiate."
The Russian foreign minister added that there are Madrid principles, there are documents that Russia prepared in 2010-2011, which is known as the Kazan document.
“There are the projects that were distributed at the meeting of the Russian, Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers with the participation of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in April 2019 in Moscow and are now being actively discussed,” Lavrov added.
“These documents envisage phased settlement of the conflict, assuming at the first stage the solution of the most pressing problems – liberating of a number of districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh region and unblocking transport, economic and other communications,” the Russian foreign minister said.
“So I am convinced that when we will decide to sign these documents, this will be the most important step in the implementation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions that demanded to end the war and to start negotiations,” Lavrov said. “We have started negotiations, now we need to come to an agreement. We are striving for this as the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group."
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding districts.