Azeri Press Agency, Azerbaijan
May 26 2006
Azerbaijani President agrees to meet his Armenian counterpart in
Bucharest
[ 26 May 2006 13:07 ]
The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs while on a visit to Baku proposed
organizing a meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents in
Bucharest, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told journalists.
He said that the Azerbaijani side has accepted this proposal and the
rest depends on Yerevan’s position (APA).
Commenting on the arrival of diplomats from the OSCE Minsk Group FMs
to the region together with the co-chairs, Mammadyarov appraised the
raising of the negotiating process to a high format.
`These three countries as permanent members of the UN Security
Council support peaceful solution of the Nagorno Garabagh conflict,’
the Minister said.
Mammadyarov called the talks in Baku very effective, `We expressed
our stance and the diplomats understood our position very well.’ He
noted that the discussed issues were not new proposals but new
opinions and ideas.
`These opinions were uttered in various forms, we can agree or
disagree to some of them uttered in the final variant. However, there
is a style in diplomacy-you should reach a compromise,’ Mammadyarov
said.
Commenting on the co-chairs’ calling `the parties to the conflict
should prepare their peoples to peace not to a war’, the Minister
said that official Baku also supports peace, `However, Azerbaijan’s
lands are under occupation, we have about a million of refugees and
IDPs. These lands should be liberated sooner or later.’
While commenting on proposals on holding a referendum in Nagorno
Garabagh like in Montenegro, Mammadyarov stressed that the situations
are quite different in Azerbaijan and Montenegro.
`Montenegrins and Serbians are living together there. So, our
position is that only Armenian community can hold it after Garabagh’s
status is solved. Returning of Azerbaijanis displaced from there
should be provided and they should participate in the process in
Nagorno Garabagh. The Referendum can be held in the framework of
Azerbaijan’s Constitution,’ the Minister underlined.
Mammadyarov declined to rule out that after achieving a status
Nagorno Garabagh will have a Constitution and reminded that
Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic has a Constitution too.
`Autonomous republics in Russia have their own Constitutions too,’
Azerbaijani Minister noted./APA/