YEREVAN, August 31. /TASS/. Armenia does not intend to return the territories "occupied" by Azerbaijan by military means, the issue must be settled peacefully, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan at a press conference.

"The opposition criticizes us for not taking measures to return the occupied territories with the area of more than 200 square kilometers. To make it clear to everyone, the territory of Armenia with an area of 29,743 square kilometers is not under discussion for us. However, we do not intend to return these territories by military means, neither today nor tomorrow, because we believe that it is possible to return them peacefully. Therefore, Armenia has no aggressive intentions," he said.

Pashinyan also noted that direct talks with Azerbaijan are yielding positive results. "I must note, and you have noticed, that work with Azerbaijan has been going on in a bilateral format for a long time, and this is yielding positive results," he said.

Pashinyan said that in a conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin he expressed his preference for direct negotiations with Baku. "At the moment we are working in a bilateral format. In our opinion, it would be right to continue in this format, and I openly told the Russian President about this during our last conversation," he said.