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Trend.Az (17 October 2017)

 By Elchin Mehdiyev

The summit of Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan in Geneva is a diplomatic success of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijani MP Aydin Mirzazade told Trend.

He noted that Armenia set impossible conditions for holding talks with Azerbaijan on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but then it stepped away from these conditions and started negotiating.

“The agreement achieved by the presidents to continue negotiations and take steps to reduce tensions shows that in the talks, the issue of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity is considered as the main principle, and Armenia understands that today the continuation of occupation policy is a big blow to its interests in the first place,” the MP noted.

 “After talks, Armenia repeatedly chose to violate the reached agreements, and the near future will show how the country is ready for constructive steps,” he added.

President Aliyev and President Sargsyan held a summit in Geneva, Switzerland on Oct. 16.

A joint statement by the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers and the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group following the Geneva meeting of the two presidents said that the meeting took place in a constructive atmosphere.

The presidents agreed to take measures to intensify the negotiation process over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict’s settlement and to take additional steps to reduce tensions on the line of contact between the two countries’ troops.

The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.

The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.