Interfax, Russia
Jan 22 2010
Lavrov voices hope summit will help improve Azerbaijan-Armenia relations
MOSCOW Jan 22
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov expressed hope on Friday that a
planned Kremlin-mediated meeting on January 25 between the presidents
of Azerbaijan and Armenia would serve to improve relations between the
two countries.
"We expect that meetings between the presidents will be continuations
of the dialogue that the two presidents had last year. It was quite an
intensive dialogue. It hasn’t lead to any impressive breakthroughs but
it has strengthened relations between the two leaders and has enabled
them to penetrate deeper into problems they are to deal with. This
primarily depends on the two leaders," Lavrov told a news conference
in Moscow.
The January 25 meeting that will bring the Azeri and Armenian
presidents, Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan, together with their
Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, will be held in Sochi, Russia.
"We want relations between all states to normalize, and we are against
artificially linking some processes to others, and it is in our
interest that Armenia should normalize its relations with Turkey as
well," Lavrov said.