Azerbaijani, Russian, Armenian FMs hold trilateral meeting in Astana

Astana, The Gulf Observer: A trilateral meeting was held between Foreign Minister of Azerbaijan Jeyhun Bayramov, Foreign Minister of Russia Sergey Lavrov, and Foreign Minister of Armenia Ararat Mirzoyan in Astana on Friday, according to media reports.

Minister Jeyhun Bayramov recalling that the last trilateral meeting in this format was held in Dushanbe in May of this year, noted that this meeting is a good opportunity to hold discussions on developments after Dushanbe. In particular, he said that a bilateral meeting was held in Geneva on October 2 regarding the peace agreement, and Azerbaijan presented the main elements of the peace agreement to Armenia at that meeting and expects Armenia to provide a response to the text. Taking into account that the basic principles of the peace agreement were presented by Azerbaijan in February of this year, and at the end of the quadrilateral meeting held in Prague both Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to mutually recognize and respect each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty, which is the basis of the peace agreement, it was emphasized that it was accepted as progress in the direction of the signing of the peace agreement.

Furthermore, the sides exchanged views on various directions of normalization between Azerbaijan and Armenia. At the opening of communications, Minister Jeyhun Bayramov noted the importance to start practical work based on the progress achieved during the negotiations in the trilateral working group. It was reported that the delimitation commissions have already been established, and two meetings have been held so far. It was brought to the attention that the third meeting is planned to be held in the near future. He stated that Azerbaijan is in favor of carrying out the work in specific directions in this process.

The minister drew attention to the importance of comprehensive implementation of the Trilateral statements. In this regard, the necessity of fulfillment of unimplemented provisions of the statements by Armenia was emphasized. Moreover, the fact of planting landmines in the territories of Azerbaijan and the failure to provide landmine maps by Armenia was noted as a serious problem.

During the meeting, they also exchanged views on other humanitarian issues that help the normalization process.