BAKU. April 6
A recent meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in Vienna showed that the parties have found some common ground for settling the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said.
"The meeting in Vienna showed that, however difficult it might be, but the parties are finding some common ground. Naturally, nobody expected this to happen quickly," Mammadyarov said in an interview with the Internet publication Moscow-Baku.
The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict lasting for more than 30 years has thrown Yerevan far back in its development, he said.
"I keep asking our Armenian friends: The conflict has been lasting for 30 years, tell me please how the Armenian citizens have benefited from this, except for the fact that more than 40% of the people in the country are poor, except for the fact that they have no prospects – the demographic situation is disastrous and the most intelligent people are leaving the country. And this whole situation somehow prompts us to think that it needs to be ended. The philosophy here is simple, and Azerbaijan has repeatedly spoken about that: you can't take some territory and flee to the Moon, you have to seek normal neighborliness anyway," he said.
On the other hand, even though it has lost control over part of its territory, Azerbaijan has achieved significant economic growth, Mammadyarov said. "We've built railroads and motor roads, we are selling oil, we have built an oil pipeline and the Southern Gas Corridor," he said.
"And I can cite numerous other examples proving that Azerbaijan has become a leading economy in the region," he said.
The Armenian leadership should persuade its own people that they need peace with their neighbors, Mammadyarov said. "The ball is in the Armenian court now – they should persuade their own population that they need peace. They say sometimes: you know, the people in Karabakh are so hard to deal with… Well, guys, this is not our problem, this is your problem. You should explain to the people that Armenia has no future without normalizing relations with Azerbaijan," he said.
The two parties should look for forms of interaction between their peoples, Mammadyarov said. "The more they communicate, the better. There is just no other option. Another option is war. Do we need it? A war would simply throw the whole region backwards," Mammadyarov said.
Azerbaijan lost control of Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts following a conflict with the region's ethnic Armenian population and Armenia in the early 1990s.
Armenia and the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic on one side and Azerbaijan on the other concluded a ceasefire in May 1994.
The negotiation process is now being held via the mediation of the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created in 1992 to look for ways to peacefully settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It comprises Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Finland, Germany, Italy, Sweden and Turkey and is co-chaired by Russia, France and the United States.
Azerbaijan does not view the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh republic as a party to the conflict and refuses to hold negotiations with it.
The situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict area dramatically deteriorated in the early hours of April 2, 2016. The parties started large-scale armed actions with the use of aircraft and artillery systems, accusing each other of violating the ceasefire on the line of contact.
Both parties claimed that their opponent suffered heavy losses, and described their own casualties as moderate.
Baku and Stepanakert announced on April 5, 2016 that they had reached a ceasefire agreement in the conflict zone.
