YEREVAN, June 30. /TASS/. Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier does not think that relations between Russia and the European Union should contradict each other, he said on Wednesday night after talks with his Armenian counterpart Eduard Nalbandian.
"We call for Armenia’s more profound relations with the EU and are hoping that we will reach success at the negotiations (devoted to a new legal document on Armenia’s relations with the EU)," Steinmeier said, welcoming "Armenia’s deep and good relations both with Russia and the EU."
"They do not have to contradict each other, but quite contrary may supplement each other," he said.
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The OSCE efforts
According to the minister, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the OSCE, will do everything possible for a long-term solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
"The OSCE and I, as OSCE current Chairman, are determined to take steps in order to find a long-term solution to this conflict," Steinmeier said, pointing out that two meetings of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan held in recent months, mediators’ efforts and other measures "have helped to ease the situation."
"We have taken the principally correct path," he said. "Now everything should be done to preserve this state of affairs and then we should try to make the negotiation process more concrete."
"For that purpose, we need efforts made by the OSCE, the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Russia, the United States and France) along with readiness of the warring sides to reach a compromise," the German foreign minister said.
"The longer the conflict goes on, the higher is the possibility of the conflict escalation," Steinmeier said. "We should make attempts to avoid this."
"Two months have passed since hostilities erupted in that region resulting in fatalities on both sides," he went on to say. "It has become unequivocally evident to all of us - both the warring sides and the OSCE - that the status quo is impossible to be maintained for a long time."