Brisk Efforts by Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan To Formulate an Agreement To End the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict

April 7 (EIRNS)—While Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev is in the Armenian capital Yerevan to ensure that the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia-backed separatists over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, does not slide into a “hot phase,” the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran, and Azerbaijan are working briskly to draft an agreement that could cool down the situation.

According to a TASS report today, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who is in Baku, said after his talks with his Iranian and Azerbaijani colleagues today: “We could not bypass such a hot issue as the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. We expressed satisfaction over the reached ceasefire…. We have exerted efforts to help our close friends to attain this agreement which, hopefully, will be complied with and observed, including with taking into account the fact that there are known agreements that had been adopted back in the 1990s and that are related to the indefinite obligations concerning the ceasefire regime.”

As TASS described the conflict’s background yesterday, “Nagorno-Karabakh sought independence from Azerbaijan at the end of the 1980s, which resulted in a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia that claimed the lives of 25-30,000 people between 1988 and 1994. Since then, the territory has been controlled by Armenia.”

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency, citing Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, said preparations are underway for a trilateral meeting of Presidents Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, Hassan Rouhani of Iran, and Vladimir Putin of Russia in the Azeri capital of Baku. Zarif also said the Iranian President will be glad to take part in the meeting. Lavrov told TASS that Russian President Vladimir Putin had direct talks by phone with the Presidents Aliyev of Azerbaijan and Serzh Sargsyan of Armenia on April 5.