Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's opening remarks during talks with Foreign Minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov and Foreign Minister of the Republic of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan, Moscow, May 19, 2023
19 May 2023 15:09
967-19-05-2023
Mr Bayramov,
Mr Mirzoyan,
I'm delighted to have both of you here. Thank you for coming to Moscow.
You and I just had separate bilateral meetings. They were quite productive and useful both in terms of promoting bilateral interaction with each friendly country and us gearing up for another round of trilateral consultations to exchange views on ways to normalise relations between Baku and Yerevan, as well as the steps that the Russian Federation can take in this area in order to facilitate the implementation in full of the tripartite statements (1, 2, 3, 4 ) signed over the past three years by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia and the Prime Minister of Armenia.
The last time we met was quite a while ago. Many new issues have come up. I hope today's meeting will be held in a constructive atmosphere, and your face-to-face dialogue will help break new ground.
Before you start the bilateral meeting, I suggest that we take a look at the entire spectrum of issues involved in normalising Azerbaijani-Armenian relations and ways to agree on further steps based on what the Russian Federation can do in this regard in order to promote normalisation.
The tripartite statements signed by our leaders provide, in effect, a roadmap for arriving at sustainable solutions. With the situation surrounding the South Caucasus in mind, we believe there is no alternative to the agreements that our leaders have achieved.
In turn, we are fully interested in seeing peace and stability here, since Russia has its own interests in this region. We will see to it that the decisions concerning the efforts to stabilise the situation get implemented.
I expect other countries which, one way or another, have a stake in having a presence in this region to respect them.
On a separate note, concurrently with the efforts to stabilise the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and on the border, it is imperative to overcome humanitarian challenges, unblock economic transport links and agree on the language of a peace treaty, which you are working on. Also, today we brought up the importance of promoting the second-track contacts with the involvement of experts, public organisations and parliamentarians, which we did before. I believe these contacts are important as an extra step to help us build up trust.
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