Armenian Foreign Ministry Accuses Azerbaijan of Impeding Karabakh Talks

YEREVAN (Sputnik) – Azerbaijan is attempting to stymie talks to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday.

“Armenia strongly condemns Azerbaijan’s futile attempts to call into question the open-ended trilateral ceasefire agreement between Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan signed in May 1994,” the ministry said in a statement responding to the Azeri Foreign Ministry’s previous remarks.

Hikmet Hajiyev, spokesman for Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said earlier on Thursday that a political settlement of the conflict is possible with the implementation of four 1993 UN Security Council resolutions calling for the withdrawal of Armenian troops from disputed areas.

Armenia argued that Azerbaijan’s statement attempts to lay blame for the April 2 escalation on Yerevan, and that it threatened to further destabilize the situation in the region. The sides agreed to a ceasefire three days later, but claimed regular violations with dozens of victims on each side.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict began in 1988, when the autonomous region with a predominantly Armenian population sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The region proclaimed independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, triggering a war that lasted until a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994.