Azerbaijan and Armenia are not ready to conclude a peace treaty on any terms, there are still some difficult issues to be resolved, director of the fourth department of the CIS countries of the Russian Foreign Ministry Denis Gonchar said in an interview with TASS, Ednews reports.
"Signals from Baku and Yerevan about the commitment to achieve peace as soon as possible do not mean that the parties are ready to agree to any conditions. We still have to find solutions on a number of difficult topics," he said, answering a question about what problems are holding back the establishment of peace between these countries.
As the diplomat noted, the most important of them is the problem of ensuring security and observance of the universally recognized rights of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh within the framework of the legal field of Azerbaijan. "The corresponding logic was determined by the parties after mutual confirmation of the effectiveness of the Alma-Ata Declaration of 1991. A mechanism for international support for the implementation of the agreement is also in demand, which would not call into question the sovereignty and political independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan," Gonchar added.
He stressed that Russia is actively assisting the parties in the preparation of a peace treaty. "The preparation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani peace treaty is one of the elements of the trilateral agreements between the President of Russia [Vladimir Putin], the President of Azerbaijan [Ilham Aliyev], and the Prime Minister of Armenia [Nikol Pashinyan]. The Russian side is actively assisting Baku and Yerevan in the preparation of this document, using political-diplomatic channels at all levels: trilateral summits are held annually, foreign ministers meet regularly," he said.