Lavrov returns to Baku

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will visit Azerbaijan on September 1st on a working visit.

The Russian Foreign Ministry reported that he will hold talks with his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov.

The sides will discuss "issues of mutual interest on the bilateral and multilateral agenda, as well as the situation in the region," RIA Novosti quotes the Russian Foreign Ministry report.

Russia's role in the negotiations on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict will be one of the themes of the visit of Sergey Lavrov to Baku, a spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Hikmat Hajiyev stated.

"The framework of the visit includes the discussion of various aspects of bilateral and multilateral cooperation between Azerbaijan and Russia, the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict and the role of Russia in the negotiation process as co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group," Interfax-Azerbaijan quotes him as saying.

Milli Majlis deputy, the political scientist Rasim Musabekov in an interview with a correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza expressed confidence that the most urgent topic for the talks between Lavrov and Mammadyarov will be the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. "This summer Elmar Mammadyarov made a visit to Moscow, met with Lavrov, and at that meeting the most important topic of discussion was finding the way for a settlement of the Karabakh conflict out of the impasse. I think that this visit should be seen, first of all, from this angle," he noted.