NKR MFA: Negotiations Should be Restored in Trilateral Format

STEPANAKERT (Armenianow) — Official Stepanakert has welcomed the Vienna meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan focused on the Nagorno Karabakh issue, but believes a “trilateral format” of negotiations must be restored.

In a statement issued on the results of the May 16 internationally mediated meeting of President Serzh Sarkisian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic’s (NKR) Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: “We support the agreement reached at the meeting to finalize the OSCE investigative mechanism, to expand the existing Office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, as well as to continue the exchange of data on missing persons under the auspices of the ICRC.

“We also share the position of the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group, excluding any possibility of a military solution to the conflict and insisting on the importance of respecting the ceasefire agreements of 1994 and 1995.

“These agreements that put an end to large-scale hostilities and thus created the opportunity for finding a peaceful settlement to the Azerbaijani-Karabakh conflict, have been achieved thanks to full participation of all three parties – Azerbaijan, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Armenia, in the negotiations. The logic of the settlement process requires the restoration of negotiations on finding a final solution to the conflict in that very trilateral format.”