According to him, the Azerbaijani side wants to deprive Karabakh from Armenians and thus solve the problem.
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The authorities in Azerbaijan have steadfastly refuted the claim, saying an unprovoked attack by Armenian forces required a response. Armenian forces also occupy several areas outside the Karabakh region. The group met on Wednesday with Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev in Baku, where they urged both sides to resolve the conflict.
In separate phone calls on Wednesday, Rouhani called on Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan to do all they can to ensure the implementation of a ceasefire now on hold in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Lavrov is set to meet with his Azerbaijani and Iranian counterparts in Baku on Thursday, while Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev will visit the Armenian capital of Yerevan on the same day.
Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry said its forces were “strictly abiding by the cease-fire agreement” that was hammered out on April 5 by the Azerbaijani and Armenian army chiefs during a meeting in Moscow. A cease-fire largely held Wednesday around Nagorno-Karabakh after an outburst of fighting that raised fea…
These efforts of Russian Federation have been mentioned by the participants of the process, said Peskov adding that Moscow, of course, will continue its consistent policy.
“On April 2, large-scale cease-fire violations took place along the Line of Contact in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone, leading to at least 33 fatalities”, the United Nations office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.
Fighting erupted on Friday amid mutual accusations by Baku and Yerevan that the other side started the clashes.
Armenians, who made up 80 per cent of the population at the time, attempted to wrestle the region back from Azerbaijan in the late 1980s during Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s liberalizing Perestroika period.
An uneasy ceasefire brokered by Russian Federation, the USA and France in 1994 left Nagorno-Karabakh under Armenian control, but years of wildly unsuccessful negotiations headed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have left the tiny mountainous region a highly militarized breakaway separatist state, with its status still unresolved.
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“I hope the steps taken by Azerbaijan to end fighting will be imitated by Armenia, but this is not the case right now”, said Erdogan. Russia, however, has supplied weapons to both countries, reflecting its desire to expand its influence in the strategic South Caucasus region, a conduit for energy resources from the Caspian Sea to the West. Nakhchivan is surrounded by Armenia, Iran and Turkey.
