Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian urged against presenting Baku’s stance on the Karabakh conflict as that of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs.

“The Armenian foreign policy chief refuted his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mammadyarov’s claims, suggesting that Russia’s Sergey Lavrov had allegedly made some proposals concerning the Karabakh conflict settlement,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Tigran Balayan said.

The Azeri side is confident that Lavrov “has stressed the need to concentrate on the withdrawal of the Armenian armed forces, return of displaced persons and establishing contacts between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno Karabakh.”

“We can only express bewilderment the same way we did at the Riga Summit, where Azerbaijan declined the EU and Eastern Partnership-proposed formulation on the Karabakh conflict settlement, based on the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs’ well-known statements,” Nalbandian said.

Addressing the Eastern Partnership Foreign Ministers summit in Tbilisi, Nalbandian noted that the Co-chairs’ statements reflect all principles and elements of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement. The Co-chairing countries – Russia, France and the United States - are confident that a selective approach to those principles and elements will hinder the conflict settlement process.

“There’s no need to present Azerbaijan’s approaches as the Co-chairs’ position,” Nalbandian said. “None of the proposals to Armenia that the Azerbaijani Foreign Minister is trying to attribute to the Russian foreign policy chief were made. I don't even think the latter has expressed such a view to the Azerbaijani side. There is no need to turn the actual situation upside down.”