BAKU, February 24. /TASS/. Azerbaijan has sent a note of protests to the Russian Foreign Ministry over supplies of weapons to Armenia, the country’s Foreign Ministry press service head Khikmet Gadzhiev told reporters on Wednesday.

Gadzhiev said that supplying Armenia with weapons and military equipment "does not facilitate the settlement of the conflict" around Nagorno-Karabakh. In this respect, Baku "is expecting guarantees from the exporting country" that weapons and equipment will not be deployed along Azerbaijan’s border with Armenia or in Nagorno-Karabakh, he noted.

Talks on Nagorno-Karabakh have been held on the basis of the so-called Madrid Principles suggested by co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Russia, France and the United States in December 2007 in the Spanish capital.

They include three key principles written in the Helsinki Final Act: refraining from the threat or use of force, territorial integrity and the right to self-determination.

Nagorno-Karabakh sought independence from Azerbaijan at the end of the 1980s, which resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that claimed the lives of 25,000-30,000 people between 1988 and 1994. Since then, the territory has been controlled by Armenia.

The OSCE Minsk Group acts as a mediator. It is a mechanism designed to promote a peace solution to the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.

The group is led by co-chairs France, Russia and the United States. It also comprises Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Turkey, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan.