Lavrov: All issues of handover of "Azerbaijani territories",  determination of the final status of Artsakh should be resolved  through negotiations

ArmInfo. The whole set of steps, measures and arrangements that are required to move the settlement of the Karabakh conflict are "on the table." This was announced on November 20 in Baku at a joint press conference with his Azeri counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

"I absolutely agree with the fact that, as the old saying goes,  everything new is a well-forgotten old. All the set of steps,  measures and arrangements that are required to move the settlement  process, as Mammedyarov said, "on the table". The set was repeatedly  summarized by the co-chairmen, starting in 2007, and then in 2009,  there were documents of 2011, many of which were deposited with the  OSCE Secretariat. The general approaches that these documents contain  have been formulated more than once in the form of statements by the  three foreign ministers as well as at the level of the presidents of  the Russian Federation, the United States and the French Republic,  so, indeed, as the saying goes, the menu is on the table. The trouble  is that these documents were compiled as package ones and it is very  difficult to find a way to exclude some sorts of things that suit to  one or the other side from this package, because, according to the  other side, the balance is immediately distracted." Lavrov said. At  the same time, he expressed the conviction that diplomacy is still  able to find approaches that are acceptable to both sides and will  allow us to move our process in the right direction.

Speaking about the possible expansion of the format, Lavrov recalled  that there is an agreed format - three co-chairmen, who exist not  only in a vacuum, but jointly preside in the OSCE Minsk Group, where  all the countries that are more or less interested and capable of  influencing this process are present. "By the way, I have not heard  any talk about the need to somehow expand the format, for the first  time I learned from you that there is such an idea. It seems to me  that in such a situation, as in many other conflict situations,  proposals for something new can be used consciously or unconsciously  as spoilers from what is already done in an established format that  has proved acceptable for both sides," he said.