The Armenia-Azerbaijan border

While sounding cautious about what it called “principled disagreements” between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Moscow on Thursday said that Yerevan and Baku are ready to “meet half way” in implementing the provisions of various statements signed by their and Russia’s leaders.

“Principled disagreements remain between Baku and Yerevan over the status of Karabakh. We see our role in rapprochement of the sides,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said Thursday during a press briefing.

She explained that by providing support to Armenia and Azerbaijan in preparation for a “peace treaty,” Russia is guided by the proposals on fundamental principles of establishing inter-state relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Zakharova explained that the basic outline of the “peace treaty” was proposed by Baku and “received constructive reaction from Yerevan. We think that these are good grounds for harmonizing the positions.”

While announcing that an meeting between the deputy prime ministers of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia will take place in the near future to focus on the opening of transport links between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Zakharova said that in Moscow’s view Yerevan and Baku “are ready to meet halfway with each other, with trilateral contacts being developed on this issue.”

“It’s obvious that the real work in various formats will yield results,” said Zakharova. “Within the current approaches we are seeing progress.”

The spokesperson said that for Russia it is important the provisions of all signed agreement are fulfilled because collectively those statement will provide true results that will impact civilian and economic factors in the region.

Zakharova said that Russia considers the high-level trilateral agreements as a basis for advancing the process of settling Armenian-Azerbaijani relations and it will continue its active work with Yerevan and Baku in all directions, including in the unblocking of economic and transportation links, the launch of the demarcation process of the Armenian-Azerbaijani border and the agreement over a peace treaty.

“Issues about unblocking the transport links were discussed during a meeting between Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Overchuk and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on April 26. An agreement has been reached with the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides on holding the next session of the trilateral working group chaired by the deputy prime ministers in the future. As for border issues, contacts are planned in Baku by the end of this week at a foreign ministry level,” Zakharova said.