Monday, December 11 2017 19:20

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.