Elmar Mammadyarov
Azerbaijan has been working on the Madrid principles for two years and submitted the appropriate document to the OSCE mediators in Greece in December, Mammadyarov told a joint press conference in Baku yesterday evening, following talks with Spain's foreign minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos.
At a trilateral meeting of the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Russian presidents in Sochi on 25 January, it was agreed that Baku and Yerevan should submit proposals on contentious points in the Madrid principles within two weeks. The Armenian foreign minister said yesterday that Yerevan had submitted its proposals.
"The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs proposed the Madrid principles for the first time in 2007," Mammadyarov said. "We have been working on these documents for two years and numerous meetings at the level of the presidents and foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia have been held in that period with numerous visits by the Minsk Group co-chairs to our region."
He said that all questions had been settled on the sidelines of the OSCE meeting in Athens in December 2009.
"The Madrid principles were presented for the first time in 2007, while their updated version was submitted in 2009. We do not consider it necessary to make new proposals. This need will depend on the results of my meeting with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs to be held in Paris on 5 March," Mammadyarov said, appearing to leave open the possibility of a submission of some kind from Baku.
Mammadyarov is to begin an official visit to Paris on 4 March, where he will probably meet the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, mediating a settlement to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, on the 5th, he told the press conference.
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