ArmInfo.The outgoing year was extremely important in terms of avoiding a dangerous escalation in the region and the restoration of the negotiating dynamics of the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement, said Russia's permanent representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich.
At a press conference on the results of the 24th OSCE Ministerial Council meeting held in Vienna on December 7-8, Lukashevich noted that Russia welcomed the contacts of the foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan during the year, which worked quite intensively, which in turn allowed them to intensively work on the platform of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Vienna, where a joint statement was adopted by the Ministers of the states of the Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group.
"There were separate contacts of the co-chairs with the ministers of the two countries, there was also a very intensive meeting of the foreign ministers of Armenia of Azerbaijan with the mediation of the mediators." On October 16, in Geneva, the two sides expressed hope that the parties agreed to intensify the negotiation process, solutions to the key problems of the Karabakh conflict, "the Russian diplomat said.
At the same time, he added that in the near future, possibly in January, the next meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will be held with the mediation of the co-chairs. "We support this trend and we believe that the co-chairs and personal representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Kasprzyk deserve every support, and it exists in a rather wide context in the OSCE, despite the persisting disagreements between the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. contradictions prevented reaching a number of ministerial agreements on various aspects of the OSCE's activities, of course, national interests are above all," Lukashevich said. And in this context, he expressed regret at the fact that the current situation does not allow reaching solutions in a wider context, say, in the economic basket, where the parties of the Karabakh conflict have their views.
At the same time, he believes that the current year's trend in Karabakh is encouraging, and expressed the hope that all this will continue in the coming year. "The Austrian chairmanship sends a very good relay race to the Italian colleagues in order to support the parties' intentions to follow the path of finding compromises in the most complicated problems that have accumulated over the past decades in the Karabakh conflict." Russia will continue to play its most important role in this negotiation process and help our friends in Yerevan and Baku to find a mutually acceptable solution as soon as possible," concluded Lukashevich.