"At the meeting with the OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said that within the spirit of negotiations in Vienna and St. Petersburg the Azerbaijani side is ready for substantive negotiations that would be aimed at change of status quo [in the region]. The Azerbaijani foreign minister had also said that military exercises of the Armenian side in the occupied Agdam region in Nagorno-Karabakh are a serious provocation, designed to violate the negotiation process," the statement said.
On April 2, violence erupted in the disputed region and led to multiple casualties. The parties to the conflict signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire on April 5, but mutual accusations have not stopped so far.
On May 16, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev met in Vienna to discuss the conflict. The sides reiterated there could be no military solution to the conflict and reaffirmed their commitment to 1994 and 1995 peace agreements.
On June 20, the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia met in St. Petersburg where they reaffirmed their commitment to achieve steady progress in political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and agreed to increase the number of OSCE monitors working in the conflict zone.
