The Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Russia Edward Nalbandian and Sergey Lavrov discussed the settlement of the Karabakh conflict at a meeting in Yerevan today.
“The recent escalation in the Karabakh conflict zone comes to prove that there is no military solution to the Karabakh conflict. The issue can be solved exceptionally in a political and diplomatic,” Lavrov told a joint press conference with Minister Nalbandian in Yerevan.
According to him, the priority at this point is to ensure full commitment to the ceasefire agreement signed in 1994, unequivocal respect for its provisions by all parties. Lavrov reiterated Russia’s willingness to provide every support to the parties both as an individual country and in its capacity as OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chair.
The Russian Foreign Minister stressed the importance of soonest implementation of confidence-building measures, the measures of investigation of border incidents agreed between the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan with Russian mediation in 2011.
He said further delay in the implementation of the measures is unacceptable.
As for Turkey’s statements that followed the escalation along the Nagorno Karabakh line of contact, the Russian Foreign Minister said they are completely unacceptable, for one reason.
“The statements were a call for war, not peace,” Lavrov said. Those were calls to solve the conflict in a military way. This contradicts the position of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs and the position of the international community.
