Agreements on Nagorno-Karabakh settlement ‘almost ready’ - Lavrov

BAKU, April 7. /TASS/. Almost all the agreements on the settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh are "on the table," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday after talks with his Azerbaijani and Iranian counterparts Elmar Mammadyarov and Javad Zarif. "Russian President Vladimir Putin pays personal attention to this issue, we regularly meet at the level of ministers with counterparts from Azerbaijan and Armenia," Lavrov said. "I agree that almost all the components of agreements are already on the table," he said, adding that "in fact, we are very close (to reaching them)." Lavrov said the talks in Baku with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov and his meeting with Armenia’s Eduard Nalbandyan on Friday focus on these efforts. He stressed that Russia is interested more than any other foreign partners that the conflict is resolved as soon as possible. "It is in our common interest to reach settlement." Russia’s top diplomat also urged measures to prevent new outbreaks of violence and called for stepping up efforts for political settlement. The situation along the line of contact in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone deteriorated dramatically overnight to April 2 when fierce clashes began. The parties to the conflict accused each other of violating the truce. At a meeting of chiefs of General Staff of Armenia and Azerbaijan in Moscow on Tuesday, an agreement was reached on the ceasefire from 11:00 a.m. (0800GMT) Moscow time on April 5. Read more