Efforts are underway to organize the next substantive talks between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration, chief of the administration`s foreign relations department told reporters on Wednesday.

He said that Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has had meetings in this regard with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs in Brussels.

Mammadov noted that the results of the meetings Mammadyarov had in Brussels will be analyzed and detailed information will then be given.

The top official also commented on Serzh Sargsyan’s statement that Armenia will return to the talks only after Azerbaijan frees the lands liberated in April.

“Sargsyan has learned to lie and slander. Such statements are not worth paying attention to. Sargsyan had better think of a castle in the air rather than hoping for those lands.” Mammadov said.

He also added that the territories liberated by Azerbaijani armed forces in April are as large as 2,500 to 3,000ha, not 800ha.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.

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