Azerbaijan Did Not Officially Propose Turkey's Candidacy as OSCE MG Co-Chair: Nesterenko

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Andrei Nesterenko said "Azerbaijan has not made an official proposal for Turkey's co-chairmanship in the OSCE Minsk Group" over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution.

"The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not received official proposal from Azerbaijan about Turkey's co-chairmanship in the OSCE Minsk Group", Azerbaijan news agency APA quoted Nesterenko as saying.

"As one of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Russia didn't receive such proposal. In any case, it needs at least in agreement of the conflict parties to make the issue practical. It is difficult to reach such agreement because of suspension of the ratification of the protocols about normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations."

According to another Azerbaijani website, abc.az, Nesterenko also said Russia was not against a tripartite meeting of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Iranian foreign ministers.

"As much as we know, Iran's proposal concerned mainly holding of tripartite meeting on conflict settlement between foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iran. Certainly we are not against such a meeting. If it takes place then it is needed to wait for concrete results and only then talks of a possibility of Iran's mediation," Nesterenko was quoted as saying.