“During the next couple of days, I am going to contact the president of Armenia and invite him to Moscow to consult with him on the Karabakh conflict regulation issue”, said Vladimir Putin during the interview with Ilham Aliev in Baku. “I agree with Aliev that in spite of the difficulties the parties are able to find a solution”, said Putin and added, “Russia will do everything to support the process in order to have a positive outcome. We don’t think that either side will pressure the other. We can only support the process and guarantee that both sides will come to terms.” As for the Armenian side, it is not rushing to accept Putin’s invitation. “There will be official explanations only when there are official invitations. We don’t have anything to say yet”, said the RA president press secretary Viktor Soghomonyan.
During the press conference Ilham Aliev also stated that “they had discussed the Karabakh conflict issue in detail with the president of Russia”. “Since Russia is a neighboring country and a representative of the OSCE Minsk Group, Azerbaijan expects the country to participate in the peaceful conflict negotiation”, said Ilham Aliev.
Today the presidents of Russia and Azerbaijan made a joint announcement, where they talked about developing inter-governmental relations to a new level of cooperation “by improving the cooperation in the political, economical, military and humanitarian sectors.” According to the announcement, the governments of Russia and Azerbaijan have to come up with a new plan for governmental cooperation, which “is not pointed towards a third country and will not get contradict the state interests of the two countries”. Vladimir Putin and Ilham Aliev evaluated this cooperation as “a key to strategic cooperation”.