Elmar Mammadyraov, the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister, stated during his interview for the local daily Zerkalo that the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs intend to visit Madrid to inform the next Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE, the Spanish Foreign Minister, on the situation regarding the resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. He was commenting on the meeting with the Minsk Group co-chairs in Brussels.
During the discussions they sounded a proposal on the organization of a next meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani Foreign Ministers, though the format of talks is still to be defined. With respect to reasons of non-conduct of talks with the Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian in Brussels, the Minister said that earlier he had meeting with his Armenian counterpart in Minsk. The Armenians have asked for a break in talks to fully comprehend the situation before deciding the direction in which the talks should continue. As far as I understood there has been no response and no meeting.
Mammadyarov announced that only a few items now remained to be discussed to co-ordinate the positions and in this context we understand the responsibility specified for a negotiator who is responsible for promoting the talks with the purpose of liberating the areas and reputation of the refugees. He also commented on the existence of the two hypotheses in the talks. These are the terms of referendum on the status of the Nagorno-Karabakh of which Armenia insists to be 5 years, but we agree a conduct of referendum after 15 years. The second is linked with the return of Lachin District of Azerbaijan.
Mr. Mammadyarov approached the statement, in a positive manner, made by the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, who called the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Ilham Aliyev and Robert Kocharian, on behalf of the OSCE Minsk Group chairs, to co-ordinate basic principles of the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In the current stage of negotiations, it is necessary to achieve more international community attention. The attention that we have drawn over the past two years is obvious. For the first time the NATO Summit in Riga determined exactly the position of the member-states which should be taken as a basis for the resolution of the conflict in the South Caucasus and Moldova.
So, all NATO countries support the principles of territorial integrity and sovereignty of South Caucasus countries and Moldova. It provides strict boundaries for the resolution of conflicts. Along with NATO member-countries, the resolution adopted at the Council of Europe, as well as bilateral documents with the EU, consolidates a new action plan, he emphasized.