MOSCOW, October 7. /TASS /. The talks on settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are useless as long as Armenia’s policies and stance remain unchanged, Azerbaijan’s Ambassador to Russia Polad Bulbuloglu has told TASS in an interview.
In his words, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov backed soonest resumption of Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations in their recent phone conversation.
"However, engaging in any kind of negotiations is useless in conditions when the armed forces of Armenia spread hostilities to new areas, provocatively attack cities and regions of Azerbaijan not directly bordering Nagorno-Karabakh and commit blatant violations of the international law and war crimes, as I have already said before."
"In his recent interviews, [Azerbaijani] President Ilkham Aliyev sent a clear message that cessation of hostilities and any kind of negotiations will be impossible until Armenia, which bears full responsibility for the escalation of the conflict, starts to comply with international law, and until international mediators provide serious guarantees that the territory will be de-occupied, preparing an exact schedule of troop withdrawal from all occupied territories of Azerbaijan," the ambassador said.
"We all want peace, but, I repeat that it yet too early to discuss any kind of negotiation platforms," he added.
The Russian Foreign Ministry said on September 30 that in separate phone calls with Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bairamov and Armenia's Foreign Minister Zograb Mnatsakanyan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov confirmed Moscow’s readiness to host negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, including a trilateral Russian-Armenian-Azerbaijani foreign ministers’ meeting.
Renewed clashes between Azerbaijan and Armenia erupted on September 27, with intense battles raging in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The area experienced flare-ups of violence in the summer of 2014, in April 2016 and this past July. Azerbaijan and Armenia have imposed martial law and launched mobilization efforts. Both parties to the conflict have reported casualties, among them civilians.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed territory that had been part of Azerbaijan before the Soviet Union break-up, but primarily populated by ethnic Armenians, broke out in February 1988 after the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region announced its withdrawal from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
In 1992-1994, tensions boiled over and exploded into large-scale military action for control over the enclave and seven adjacent territories after Azerbaijan lost control of them. Talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement have been ongoing since 1992 under the OSCE Minsk Group, led by its three co-chairs - Russia, France and the United States.