Moscow: Place of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents’ meeting not determined

Moscow: Place of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents’ meeting not determined
# 20 July 2017 13:41 (UTC +04:00)

The place of the meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents has not yet been determined, Artem Kozhin, deputy director of the Russian Foreign Ministry's Information and Press Department, told a briefing on July 20, APA’s Moscow correspondent reported.

The information, earlier published in the "Izvestia" newspaper with reference to a source in Russia's Foreign Ministry saying that the next meeting of the two presidents would be held in Moscow, does not correspond to reality, he said.

“We noticed the article in "Izvestia" and we would like to point to factual inaccuracies in the publication,” Kozhin noted.

“During the meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers held in Brussels by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, it was offered to organize a meeting of the presidents of the two countries by late 2017, Kozhin said, adding that the meeting place was not discussed in detail.

“Considering the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict being a sensitive issue, we call on the Izvestiya newspaper to refer to official sources only,” he added.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in December 1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Nagorno Garabagh

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