BAKU (Sputnik) – Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on Thursday called for the immediate withdrawal of military forces on the contact line of the conflict in the de facto independent Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
"Journalists like to call it a frozen conflict, protracted conflict. It’s a conflict in which [there] needs to be reached a breakthrough sooner rather than later," Mammadyarov told reporters.
Speaking at a joint conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif, he underscored that each day of postponing the withdrawal costs human lives.
"It’s absolutely clear that the military should return back to their barracks, it’s a must… This should be done as soon as possible," the Azerbaijani diplomat stressed.
The violence in Nagorno-Karabakh, an Azerbaijani breakaway region with a predominantly Armenian population, escalated on Saturday. Baku and Yerevan have accused each other of provoking hostilities that led to multiple deaths on each side.
On Tuesday, the heads of the Armenian and Azerbaijani general staff reached a ceasefire deal in the Russian capital of Moscow. The parties have since accused each other of multiple violations.
