Baku, Azerbaijan, March 18
Trend:
Russia, as the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair should monitor the use of weapons by Yerevan, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said in his interview with Russian Kommersant newspaper.
Commenting on the note that Baku sent to Moscow due to the weapon supply to Armenia, Mammadyarov said that Russia is a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.
"On the other side, we recognize that every state has the right to supply weapons to the country, which it deems necessary," said the minister. "The note's content was to request Russia to take into account that when supplying Armenia with weapons, these weapons should not be in the occupied Azerbaijani territories."
"A rule of the end user exists in such supplies. If Armenia was the end user, the issue wouldn't go beyond the framework of bilateral relations between Moscow and Yerevan," said Mammadyarov.
If the weapon is in Azerbaijan's occupied territories, it is quite another matter, he added.
Earlier, commenting on the entry into force of the loan agreement for the sale of Russian arms and military equipment to Armenia in the amount of $200 million, spokesman for the Azerbaijani foreign ministry Hikmat Hajiyev said that the ministry sent the note to the Russian Foreign Ministry.
The note stated that Azerbaijan has repeatedly brought to the attention of the international community irrefutable facts that the weapons and military equipment purchased by Armenia are deployed in Azerbaijan's occupied territories in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
Regarding the agenda of the nearest meeting, Mammadyarov said that foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Russia will discuss the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
"We will discuss the development of bilateral cooperation, in particular, the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict," he said.