RUSSIA FM WINDING UP OFFICIAL VISIT TO ARMENIA WED
ITAR-TASS News Agency, Russia
April 4, 2007 Wednesday
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday is winding up
his official visit to Armenia and departs for a working visit to
Turkmenistan in order to discuss with the country’s leadership issues
related to the development of bilateral cooperation.
Lavrov’s talks in Yerevan with his Armenian colleague Vartan Oskanian
focused, among other things, on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
In the words of the Russian minister, the conflict "is qualifying
for the unique status, because in the practical sense the interests
of the United States, Russia, the EU do not contradict each other,
as well as the conflicting sides."
"A specific project has been worked out within the OSCE Minsk group
that makes it possible to untie the knot, but the Armenian and
Azerbaijani leadership have the final say," Lavrov stressed. "We
highly assess the sides’ efforts to settle the conflict," he said.
"Russia will be ready to act as a guarantor of the agreements," the
Russian diplomacy head noted. "We want a quick conflict settlement and
hope that the sides will manage to reach agreements on Nagorno-Karabakh
in the near future," Lavrov pointed out.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin said that the
programme of Lavrov’s visit to Turkmenistan "envisages meetings with
President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov and Turkmen Foreign Minister
Rashid Meredov."
The sides "will consider the state of and prospects for the development
of bilateral relations in the economic sphere," according to Kamynin.
"The Russian side considers necessary to take a number of additional
steps in order to make relations in this sphere more stable and
sustained, more fully use with this end in view the two countries’
rich potential," the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman pointed out.
"In Ashgabat the sides will exchange views on international problems,
the situation in the Central Asian region, on the settlement of the
Caspian Sea legal status," Kamynin said.