MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. Agreements reached by the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents at their Monday’s meeting in Vienna are to put an end to the escalation in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, a Russian lawmaker said on Tuesday.
The participants in the talks on Nagorno-Karabakh in Vienna on Monday involving the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia and mediated by the foreign ministers from the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair countries (Russia, the United States and France) agreed to observe ceasefire in the region in compliance with the 1994-1995 accords. The parties to the conflict also agreed to complete as soon as possible the work on an OSCE tool on investigating incidents on the contact line.
"Agreements reached by the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents reached yesterday in Vienna are to put an end to the so-called April crisis and the aggravation of the situation at the border. It is vitally important bearing in mind that the conflict [in Nagorno-Karabakh] is still simmering and continues to claim human lives," Leonid Slutsky, the chairman of the committee for the affairs of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Eurasian integration and relations with compatriots of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, told journalists.
From this point of view, "the Vienna agreements are to be a model of a global solution on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement," he said. "I hope it will be found in a foreseeable future. This is the problem we have no right to leave to the next generation."
Monday’s meeting was the first personal meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents since the aggravation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh in early April.
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- Armenian president says satisfied with results of his meeting with Azerbaijani counterpart
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The situation along the line of engagement of the conflicting parties in Nagorno-Karabakh deteriorated dramatically overnight to April 2. Following fierce armed clashes at the contact line, the parties to the conflict accused each other of violating truce.
On April 5, Russia mediated a meeting between Colonel-General Nadzhmeddin Sadykov, the chief of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces General Staff, and Colonel-General Yuri Khachaturov, the chief of the Armenian Armed Forces General Staff, that took place in Moscow. The sides agreed to cease the hostilities on the line disengaging the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops in Nagorno-Karabakh. The defense ministries of Azerbaijan and Armenia announced a ceasefire on the contact line as of 12:00 (11:00 Moscow time) the same day. Ever since, the parties occasionally report brief exchanges of fire at the contact line.