Azerbaijan ignores offers from Nagorno-Karabakh to hold meetings – FM Ghazaryan

STEPANAKERT, AUGUST 18, ARMENPRESS. Nagorno-Karabakh is most eager to achieve a comprehensive settlement to conflict with Azerbaijan through peaceful negotiations, the Nagorno-Karabakh Foreign Minister Sergey Ghazaryan has said.

“We must note a few important facts here,” Ghazaryan said when asked how direct talks between Stepanakert and Baku could be organized. “Firstly, such talks must proceed as part of an international format, which would allow the parties involved to see that the negotiations are proceeding in line with norms and requirements of international law. Secondly, clear guarantees must be stipulated that the parties shall implement their obligations, given that we have the 9 November document which includes the signature of Azerbaijan’s President, which doesn’t function,” Ghazaryan said.

He said that he received an offer to meet with Azeri representatives in a third country planned for early August, but Azerbaijan cancelled its participation.

Another offer was made to meet in Yevlakh. “We received a proposal to meet in Yevlakh. But as you know, our countryman, Vagif Khachatryan, was kidnapped by the Azerbaijani forces while being transported by the ICRC to Armenia. In this logic, any meeting, especially without international mediators and the presence of a third party, in Azerbaijani territory, is impossible. Let me add that the Nagorno-Karabakh side is regularly conveying through the Russian peacekeepers proposals to hold meetings, which are ignored by Azerbaijan. The latest such meeting took place on March 1, when technical and humanitarian issues were discussed, but the Azerbaijani side attempted to distort the content of that meeting, and on March 5 we saw the Azerbaijani side’s raid, when three police officers were killed and one was wounded,” the foreign minister of Artsakh said.