Russia is interested in increasing confidence between Azerbaijan and Armenia, as well as creating conditions for a full-fledged normalization between Baku and Yerevan. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at a trilateral meeting with Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts Jeyhun Bayramov and Ararat Mirzoyan.
According to Interfax-Azerbaijan, at the beginning of the talks, Lavrov thanked his colleagues who responded to the Russian side's proposal "to take advantage of the participation of the CIS Foreign Ministers Council to hold a meeting": this "will allow us to continue joint work to monitor the tripartite statements' implementation" by the countries leaders.
"We are interested in turning the South Caucasus into a zone of peace, sustainable development and prosperity", the Russian minister pointed out.
"I hope that today's meeting will make it possible to advance along the path that was outlined by our leaders", Lavrov stressed.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Minister called the meeting "a good opportunity to discuss the progress that can be achieved" and also expressed regret over the lack of "progress in the work on opening transport communications".
"I know that contacts between colleagues continue. And we believe that there is a good prospect, a good opportunity to achieve results and implement the trilateral statements completely", Bayramov said.
"Recently, we have had quite intensive contacts in terms of launching the process of the state border's delimitation. I believe that there are good materials, understanding in terms of the delimitation commission's composition and representativeness of the parties, and I also believe that in the near future it will be possible to at least launch this process", the minister said.
He stressed that Baku was ready to start work on a peace treaty, expressed confidence that the meeting in Dushanbe, and the continuation of contacts in general, will have a positive impact on the continuation of the discussion.
