The Russian Foreign Ministry praised on Thursday the latest high-level contacts between Armenia and Azerbaijan aimed at reviving the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.
“We welcome the positive trends that are apparent,” said the ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova. “It is now important to build on them and not to harm them with careless rhetoric which has unfortunately happened lately.”
“From our part, we will provide necessary support to these positive trends,” Zakharova told a news briefing in Moscow.
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke with each other during a summit of the Commonwealth of Independent States held in Tajikistan on September 28. Pashinian said afterwards that they agreed to stop ceasefire violations in the conflict zone which had intensified in recent weeks.
A top aide to Aliyev also gave a positive assessment of the conversation as well as a fresh meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers held in New York on September 26.
According to the U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group, Foreign Ministers Zohrab Mnatsakanian and Elmar Mammadyarov “confirmed the importance of taking measures to intensify the negotiation process and to take additional steps to reduce tensions.”
“The Ministers agreed to meet again before the end of the year,” they said in a joint statement.
Pashinian and Aliyev were first introduced to each other by Russian President Vladimir Putin when they attended in June the opening ceremony of the 2018 football World Cup hosted by Russia. They have held no formal negotiations yet.
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