BAKU, January 29. /TASS/. Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry did not rule out the possibility of a meeting between Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanyan on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February.
"The place and date of the next meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers have not been agreed on yet, but everything is possible," Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Leyla Abdullayeva told TASS. According to Abdullayeva, "Azerbaijan supports negotiations not for the sake of holding negotiations but for the sake of achieving effective results." "This is our principled stance," she stressed.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mnatsakanyan did not rule out at a press briefing in Yerevan the possibility of a meeting with Mammadyarov on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February to continue talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh issue.
Mammadyarov and Mnatsakanyan last met to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis in Paris on January 16. Reports said after the meeting that the two top diplomats agreed to hold the next meeting in February.
The conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh broke out in February 1988, when the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region declared its withdrawal from the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic. During the 1992-1993 armed conflict Azerbaijan lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh and seven neighboring regions.
Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been going on since 1992. Russia, the US and France are co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that acts as a mediator in resolving the crisis.