The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan, Elmar Mammadyarov made has said in Tbilisi that Sergey Lavrov presented a proposal on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement during his recent visit to Armenia. According to Mammadyarov, this implies that “one should focus on the withdrawal of the Armenian military forces, return of internally displaced persons and establishment of contacts between the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities of Nagorno Karabakh.”
Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian responded to the claims at the Eastern Partnership Informal Ministerial Dialogue in Tbilisi, Spokesman for Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Tigran Balayan said in comments to Radio Liberty. Minister Nalbandian said, in part:
“All of us, gathered here, can only express bewilderment, as we did at the Riga Summit, when Azerbaijan rejected the wording proposed by everyone, including the EU member-states and EaP states in the Summit’s Final Declaration on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, which was based on the well-known statements by the Heads of Co-Chair states. It is known that they reflect the principles and elements of the settlement as an integrated whole. The joint approach of the Co-Chair states – Russia, United States and France, is well-known, that selective approach to those principles and elements will make the settlement of the conflict impossible.
Azerbaijan’s approaches should not be presented as a position of the Co-Chairs, especially given the fact that those principles and elements are published in the five well-known statements.
Regarding to what Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister presents and how he attempts to ascribe it to Sergey Lavrov, such an approach has not been proposed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia to the Armenian side, and I do not think that he would have proposed such an approach to the Azerbaijani side.
One should not turn the reality upside-down.”
