BAKU, June 6. /TASS/. Azerbaijan and Armenia are "on the threshold of peace," Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov said on Tuesday.
"With the end of the nearly thirty-year-long armed conflict and the commitments to respect each other’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders which the two countries have undertaken for the first time since they regained their independence, Azerbaijan and Armenia are on the threshold of peace," the Azerbaijani foreign ministry quoted him as saying at a special session of the Permanent Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
He stressed that his country is working closely with Armenia to ensure lasting peace. The talks held recently in Washington, Brussels, Moscow, and Chisinau "have made the sides’ positions clear," he noted.
"Jeyhun Bayramov stressed that Azerbaijan expects Armenia to reciprocate the political will necessary to settle differences on three concrete tracks on the agenda of bilateral talks," the ministry said, adding that the minister noted that the key obstacles standing in the way of normalizing relations between the two countries are "Armenia’s ongoing illegal military presence in Azerbaijan’s sovereign territories," its interference into Azerbaijan’s domestic affairs, and the hindrance to Baku’s dialogue with the local Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh.