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Tofig Zulfugarov: "US appointing new person to post of co-chairman of Minsk Group is groundless and has no prospects"

Tofig Zulfugarov, former Minister of Foreign Affairs

26 August 2022 14:46 (UTC +04:00)

"US State Department's appointing a new person Philip Reeker to the post of senior adviser for Caucasus negotiations - co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group is groundless," former Minister of Foreign Affairs Tofig Zulfugarov told APA.

Tofig Zulfugarov has said that what happened in Karabakh in the initial period was an internal conflict and Azerbaijan appealed for mediation in 1991: "Purpose was OSCE's prevention Armenia's probable future occupation. But on the contrary, during so-called "activity" period of OSCE Minsk Group Azerbaijani territories were occupied, let alone prevention of occupation. Unfortunately, it is not possible to say something positive about activity of the Minsk Group. After Azerbaijan has already resolved the problem, any mediation in this issue is not needed."

Former Foreign Minister has added that Azerbaijan has given priority to Russian-Turkish tandem during the period of Patriotic War and post-Patriotic War: "Azerbaijan wants to resolve the rest of issues via Russia and Turkiye. Russian peacekeeping mission and Russian-Turkish Monitoring Mission are acting. Certainly, its configuration can also change. But Azerbaijan sees Russia and Turkiye as a partner. Because relations between Russia and Turkiye allow Turkiye to eliminate negative issues as an ally in the future. It is Azerbaijan's approach. As for why the Minsk Group does not satisfy Azerbaijan, we do not only talk about the US, Congres of which adopts contradictory decisions, other states, which are fans of Armenia. It should be taken into consideration firstly that there is Armenia in the middle. Earlier, Yerevan has rights at the same level as Baku regarding Karabakh, a territory of Azerbaijan. Now the situation has completely changed, certainly, it is unacceptable. Azerbaijan does not want Armenia to participate in these processes in any form. Ongoing processes now show that Azerbaijan wants Armenia to fully stop intervention in our domestic issues. In this term, format of the Minsk Group is not now needed and is against our interests. As for the US, the West does not want the Russian-Turkish tandem to be dominant in the region, and wishes for restoration of the previous format. They want Western-Russian conflict to happen in this region too. We have repeatedly seen it during activity period of the Minsk Group. Both the West and Russia had their interests, they completely forgot conflict, and no result has been achieved during 30 years."

Tofig Zulfugarov has noted that Azerbaijan does not need to bring West-Russian conflict to the region: "For namely these two factors, US State Department's appointing a new person Philip Reeker to the post of senior adviser for Caucasus negotiations - co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk Group is groundless and it has no prospect. Because only Azerbaijan has a right to say something on the issue and has announced its position."