Lavrov excludes settlement of Nagorno Karabakh conflict through use of force

The Nagorno Karabakh conflict cannot be settled through use of force, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during an annual press conference on January 17.

He drew the attention on the decisions adopted by the UN Security Council over the conflict, stating that the conflict must be settled without the use of force and with clarification of the final status of Nagorno Karabakh.

“This is enshrined in the documents prepared by the OSCE Minsk Group through the Co-Chairs, it is enshrined in numerous statements adopted by the Presidents of the co-chairing countries, Russia, France and US, as well as in the statements and documents adopted by the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan. The peaceful settlement of the disputes is enshrined there with no ambiguous meaning,” the Russian FM said.

He considered alarming the bloody events that took place in April, 2016. “Russia played a decisive role in stopping the bloodshed. We have agreed with President Sargsyan and President Aliyev at the meeting in Vienna, then Russian President Putin reached an agreement with them in June in Petersburg that taking into account the mutual accusations it is necessary to install a mechanism for investigating the incidents, to increase the number of OSCE observers in the line of contact. The necessity of investigation of incidents was also emphasized in 2011 during the meeting of the Presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan in Astrakhan. Unfortunately, such simple thing, the investigation of incidents and increase of number of observers cannot be implemented since there is no consensus yet,” Lavrov said.