Ed. Nalbandian: Meeting in St. Petersburg was quite effective: Armenpress
The June 20 trilateral meeting between the Presidents of Armenia, Russia and Azerbaijan in St. Petersburg was the logical continuation of Vienna meeting, which ended by achieving important agreements, Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian told the reporters after the meeting of the presidents. “Armenpress” reports the whole interview of the Minister: “According to those agreements conditions must be created for the resumption of negotiations. The ministers of the Co-chair countries issued an announcement in Vienna that expressed the agreements and commitments the side assumed. First of all it was about the settlement through exclusively peaceful methods, as well as respect for the trilateral indefinite agreements of 1994-1995. The ministers of the Co-chair countries particularly stated its importance, as well as the creation of investigative mechanisms that will detect incidents both on Armenian-Azerbaijani border and Karabakh-Azerbaijan contact line. There were also talks about enlarging the capacities of the OSCE team”, the Minister mentioned. Nalbandian reminded that after the Vienna meeting ministerial meetings took place in Brussels and Paris, where the representatives of the Co-chair countries introduced their proposals, which were mainly about creating investigative mechanisms and enlarging the team of OSCE’s monitoring mission. “The Armenian side collaborates with the Co-chairs over those two proposals. Unfortunately, we can document that Azerbaijan had not demonstrated a constructive stance until today”, Nalbandian said, clarifying that Azerbaijan impeded adding the funding of OSCE’s monitoring mission, but today once again it was reconfirmed that the group must be enlarged and it was mentioned also in the joint statement of the presidents. “Anyway, the issue remains the same, to bring into life the mechanisms, as it is not the first time that theme is touched upon. The sides had agreed upon creating such mechanisms at least twice at presidential level in Sochi in 2011-2012. The results were the same, Azerbaijan tried to step back. Besides, in the period between the Vienna and St. Petersburg meetings Azerbaijan made different announcements that can hardly be called constructive, while yesterday Azerbaijan conducted large-scale military exercises with 25 thousand servicemen and heavy armaments yesterday, prior to the summit. I would not assess it as a constructive act”, the Foreign Minister added. According to him, the meeting in St. Petersburg was quite effective. “With some caution, but any way, I can say that it went on in a constructive atmosphere. The Presidents agreed that if there is some agreement over some specific issues, it will be possible to go on with the negotiation process towards the conflict settlement. This is also mentioned in the statement issued by the presidents. An agreement was reached to continue meetings at ministerial and presidential levels, and this entire process will go on in the sidelines of the OSCE Minsk Group format. It is not accidental that the Ambassadors of the Co-chairing countries were invited to participate in the final part of the meeting. In addition, the Armenian President held a separate meeting with the Co-chairs introducing our impressions over this summit”, Edward Nalbandian concluded.
