MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th April, 2019) Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said Friday that a meeting with his Armenian counterpart, Zohrab Mnatsakanyan, might be held in Moscow soon.
Mammadyarov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met in Moscow earlier on Friday. The Azerbaijani foreign minister arrived in Russia to attend the Commonwealth of Independent States' (CIS) Foreign Ministers Council session.
"Our meeting with Sergey Viktorovich [Lavrov] was wonderful, as always. We discussed not only bilateral relations, but also conflict resolution. I think that in the very near future, we have already agreed that a meeting of the foreign ministers and the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group will be announced. I think that Sergey Viktorovich will also participate," Mammadyarov said and noted that the next meeting on the Nagorno-Karabakh problem would "most likely" be held in Moscow.
Nagorno-Karabakh, a landlocked region in the South Caucasus with a predominantly Armenian population, proclaimed independence in 1991, which was followed by a bloody three-year war between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The region is officially viewed as an Azerbaijani territory. The pressure in the area continues, resulting in occasional violence. The latest escalation of tensions in the region happened in April 2016.
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, which is co-chaired by Russia, the United States and France, was created back in 1992 to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh.
In late March, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev held his first official meeting with Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the Austrian capital of Vienna to discuss the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. Both sides commended the talks.
