Official Yerevan denied on Tuesday Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov’s claims that international mediators presented him and his Armenian counterpart Zohrab Mnatsakanian with a Nagorno-Karabakh peace plan at their meeting held in Washington last week.
The U.S., Russian and French mediators co-heading the OSCE Minsk Group said the June 20 talks mediated by them focused on recent ceasefire violations around Karabakh and “core issues of the settlement process.” In a joint statement, they urged the conflicting parties to “strictly” observe the ceasefire.
“The co-chairs presented official documents [on the conflict’s resolution] in Washington,” Mammadyarov told a news conference in Baku on Monday. “We have to work on them for one or two months.”
In Mammadyarov’s words, the peace proposals are based on another joint statement which was issued by the mediators on March 9.
That statement stressed that “any fair and lasting settlement” must involve “return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance; a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh; future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding expression of will.” The mediators have favored this peace formula, also known as the Madrid Principles, for more than a decade.
“The Azerbaijani foreign minister’s claims do not correspond to reality,” said Anna Naghdalian, the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. “Such an approach is unconstructive and it undermines the seriousness of the negotiating process.”
In written comments, Naghdalian said the Azerbaijani “disinformation” suggests that Baku does not intend to heed the mediators’ calls. In that regard, she deplored Mammadyarov’s remark that the absence of truce violations on the frontlines is not necessary for holding “substantive negotiations” on a peaceful settlement.
According to the Turan news agency, Mammadyarov also said that the two sides will “seriously analyze” the peace plan before another meeting of the foreign ministers expected this year. He said Baku disagrees with some of its provisions but did not elaborate.
The top Azerbaijani diplomat similarly stated earlier that a Russian version of the Madrid Principles was on the agenda of his previous meeting with Mnatsakanian which was held in Moscow on April 15 in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. That claim was also dismissed by Yerevan.
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