Russia says Karabakh Conflict Topic Demands Silence from Public

YEREVAN (Armenpress)—Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, referring to the St. Petersburg meeting results between the Presidents of Russia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, said the topic of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement demands silence from the public. She said diplomats and experts must work on it, reports TASS.
“It is important not to diminish the positive result by public rhetoric, it must be preserved for the implementation of concrete steps,” she said during the daily briefing.
Zakharova says she understands the interest of media on this issue, however, added that there is a “difference between the provision of information and the use of the public area for measuring the force.”
“It is important to take such steps in order to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement into a certain and real platform,” Zakharova said.
However, after both meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg with Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev spoke out against agreements made with the Chairpersons of the OSCE Minsk Group regarding measures for peace in Karabakh.
Aliyev also made clear that Azerbaijan will not agree to the deployment by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe of a large number of monitors on the Karabakh frontlines and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border.
In a joint statement issued after those talks, Kerry, Lavrov and Desir said Aliyev and Sarkisian “agreed to finalize in the shortest possible time an OSCE investigative mechanism.” According to the statement, the two presidents also agreed to expand an OSCE mission monitoring the shaky ceasefire.
Aliyev contradicted the mediators’ statement, however, when he addressed Azerbaijani military personnel in Baku on Saturday. “As regards a mechanism for investigating [armed] incidents which the Armenians have set as a condition, I think that there is no need for that at this stage,” he said remarks cited by Azerbaijani news agencies.
“What is the point of doing that?” he said. “If the idea is to ‘freeze’ the conflict and take some additional measures on the Line of Contact, then Azerbaijan will certainly not agree to that.”
Baku will allow OSCE investigations only if the Armenians and mediators set “time frames for the liberation of our territories,” added Aliyev. He also made clear that the OSCE will be allowed to deploy only a few more field representatives periodically monitoring the ceasefire regime in the conflict zone.