Spotlight: Russia active in urging peaceful solution to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

While the Nagorno-Karabakh cease-fire agreement took effect Tuesday, major world powers and organizations, especially Russia, continued to urge a peaceful solution to the deep-seated conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Analysts believed that though the direct sides of the conflict are Armenia and Azerbaijan, the key to solving the issue lies in major powers outside of the region.

However, given the complexity of the conflict, which has lingered on for more than 20 years after a cease-fire deal was reached in 1994, and the lack of momentum, such powers as Russia, the European Union and the United States have no willingness to break the status quo, and reignite flames of war.

Sheng Shiliang, research fellow at the World Affairs Studies Center of Xinhua News Agency, said on Friday that "Russia doesn't wish to see hot war, it also doesn't want an overall settlement, as the territorial dispute can be used as a tool to hold back NATO's enlargement."

"In the former Soviet Union region, Russia can still play an important role," he said.

Since the beginning of the recent hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Russia has been active in mediating and promoting peace talks.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Thursday in the Armenian capital Yerevan that the transition of the conflict "in the hot phase" may have the most serious consequences for the whole South Caucasus region.

Russia is ready to continue to play a major role in the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and to make every effort to achieve a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Medvedev said at a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart Hovik Abrahamyan.

The Russian prime minister expressed the hope that the cease-fire agreement will continue to be respected by Armenia and Azerbaijan. "The settlement must engage in diplomacy rather than the military to prevent loss of life and destruction of infrastructure," he said.

On the same day, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia will continue to support a peaceful solution to the current conflict, and that "Moscow will continue its same policy."

"Russia maintains good relations with both Yerevan and Baku, and uses these relationships to create the conditions to work bilaterally and through international means," he said.

"The situation requires working out confidence-building measures on the line of contact and looking back to the previous agreement reached during the talks," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Thursday after a planned trilateral meeting with his Azerbaijani and Iranian counterparts.

In a phone conversation, the minister and his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault, whose countries are co-chairs of the Minsk Group along with the United States, agreed to unite efforts to normalize the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region as soon as possible, according to the Russian Sputnik News Agency and Radio.

Meanwhile, the co-chairs of OSCE Minsk Group from Russia and France arrived Thursday at Nagorno-Karabakh, aiming to prevent violations of the cease-fire and a further escalation of the long-term conflict.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday called for a peaceful solution to the conflict, saying efforts toward an "acceptable and permanent cease-fire" in the region are "of the utmost urgency."

Speaking at a press conference after meeting visiting Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in Berlin, Merkel said that Germany advocated resolving the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan peacefully and wanted to "help constructively."

During telephone conversations with the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia on Wednesday, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev also called for a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Nazarbayev said the two conflicting sides should renew bilateral talks under relevant international law and that the OSCE Minsk Group should monitor the process.

U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner told a press briefing on Tuesday that the United States welcomed the cease-fire and called on the parties to return to the Minsk peace process.

Meanwhile, the French foreign minister said Tuesday, "We can see that military conflict cannot be the solution, nor is the status quo."

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been locked in a bitter dispute over the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh since 1988 when the enclave dominated by ethnic Armenians claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia.

Peace talks have been held since 1994 when a cease-fire was reached, but there have been occasional minor clashes.

Recent hostilities between Armenia and Azerbaijan on the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh flared up overnight Saturday with the two countries blaming each other for triggering the escalation. Endi