Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 1
By Elchin Mehdiyev - Trend:
The meeting in Dushanbe between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at the CIS Council of Heads of State gives grounds to say that the issue of participation of the illegal regime established in the occupied Azerbaijani territories as a party in the negotiations on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, voiced by Pashinyan in previous statements, has been removed from the agenda, political analyst Arzu Nagiyev told Trend.
He believes this issue will no longer appear in the agenda. "At the same time, the meeting can be regarded as the resumption of negotiations on the settlement of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The instructions given to the defense and law enforcement agencies of both states, and in general to the agencies dealing with this issue, provide for constant mutual contact," Nagiyev said.
"This appears from the post of Pashinyan on the social networks that he has instructed the leadership of the illegal regime to do everything possible to fully achieve the ceasefire on the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops. This is an important factor indicating that appropriate steps are being taken in the Azerbaijan-Armenia negotiations, just the way the Azerbaijani diplomacy has wished," Nagiyev said.
He added that following the meeting in Dushanbe, an agreement was reached in regard to continuation of negotiations on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.