Azerbaijan, Baku, 12 June / corr. Trend I. Alizade/ The official Baku believes that the visit of the Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to Azerbaijan will provide conditions for further development of the relations between the two countries. "One of the fundamental orientations of Azerbaijan's foreign policy is to establish the closed corporation with the neighboring countries. Azerbaijan attaches great importance to its relations with Russia," Novruz Mammadov, head of the international relations department of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan said to Trend on 12 June.
The newly-elected Russian president Dmitri Medvedev will pay his first official visit to Azerbaijan on 3 to 4 July. The visit will take place at an invitation of the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
"The visit of Dmirti Medvedev shows that Azerbaijan is one of the four or five priority countries for Russia," Mammadov said.
According to Novruzov, Azerbaijan wants only one thing from Russia. "We believe that if Russia expresses its will on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it would be fair and right. The position of Russia on the settlement of this conflict is of great significance. If Russia takes more fair and concrete position in this regard, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be solved soon," Mammadov said.
The conflict between the two countries of the South Caucasus began in 1988 due to Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan lost the Nagorno-Karabakh, except of Shusha and Khojali, in December 1991. In 1992-93, Armenian Armed Forces occupied Shusha, Khojali and Nagorno-Karabakh's seven surrounding regions. In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement at which time the active hostilities ended. The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group ( Russia, France, and the US) are currently holding peaceful negotiations.
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