Lavrov: Russia will continue collective work on settlement of Karabakh conflict [UPDATE]

By Azernews

By Rashid Shirinov

Russia will continue collective work on the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said at a press conference in Vienna on December 8.

"In each conflict, it is necessary to understand what is priority. But it is also necessary to rely on certain common approaches. Among these approaches, first of all, is a direct dialogue between the sides of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," he said.

Lavrov regretted that the dialogue has not yielded significant progress so far. "However, there is a positive moment – this year's dialogue was at the level of presidents and several times at the level of foreign ministers,” he added.

The Russian FM also noted his country will continue collective work with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.

"The collective approach contains the solution principles that the sides have accepted, but have not implemented yet. This is a tough task, but we continue to deal with it,” Lavrov said.

Russia, along with the U.S. and France, is a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Today the country can be called the most active co-chair of the MG, as the Russian president and FM have numerously held trilateral meetings with Azerbaijani and Armenian heads of state and foreign ministers in order to accelerate the settlement process of the long-standing conflict.

Last month, Lavrov paid a visit to the region, where he met with Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents and FMs and among other topics discussed the conflict related issues with them.