Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's statement that the latest meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan was formal demonstrates the real attitude of Baku towards the negotiations, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and basic principles of the conflict settlement, Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia Shavarsh Kocharyan told reporters.
He thinks it is this stand of Baku that has hindered any progress in the Karabakh peace process for years. The progress in the talks depends on the progress in the parties' stands rather than on the intensification of the process, he said.
Kocharyan said that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs' efforts to ensure progress in the talks and organize meetings of the parties will give no results if Baku keeps behaving the same way as during the latest meeting of the presidents in Bern. "I think the co-chairs and the international community should again discuss the current situation, analyze it and change it to a certain extent, because under the current circumstances it is impossible to achieve progress", he said.
He added that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are also concerned and they try to find the ways out of the current situation given that at the latest meeting of the presidents in Bern they pointed out the need to take preventive measures to reduce the number of incidents on the line of contact of the Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijani troops.
"However, if the co-chairs fail to succeed, new approaches should be displayed - either enforcement measures should be taken against Azerbaijan or the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic should be recognized," said Kocharyan.