BUDAPEST. – Restoring relations with Armenia is a priority for Hungarian diplomacy, Hungary’s Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi told reporters on Thursday.

“What the Prime Minister decides is also a government decision. For this reason, there is no use in arguing whether the government or the Prime Minister made the decision in Safarov’s case,” he said.

In reply to a question, Martonyi said there was no question of his resigning, politics.hu website of Hungary reports.

The Hungarian FM also confirmed that he had requested Switzerland’s help in mending relations between Hungary and Armenia.

“But it is not about mediating in the context of diplomacy; this is not what I have asked for at a meeting with my Swiss colleague,” Martonyi said. He noted that any sort of help was highly appreciated, pointing to the help the Armenian community in Hungary had already offered.

Janos Martonyi also said he had asked his counterparts’ help in settling the affair at an informal EU meeting last weekend, and his experience had been that they had generally understood the situation and had been aware of the “sensitive nature” of the issue.

Armenian News-NEWS.am reported earlier that Ramil Safarov, a lieutenant in the Azerbaijani military, was extradited on August 31 from Hungary, where he was serving a life sentence—and with no expression of either regret or remorse—for the premeditated axe murder of Armenian lieutenant Gurgen Margaryan, in his sleep, during a NATO Partnership for Peace program in Budapest back in 2004.

As expected, Ramil Safarov’s return to Baku was welcomed, as was his act of murder, by the officials of president Ilham Aliyev’s government and much of Azerbaijani society, and the Azerbaijani president immediately granted him a pardon.

And Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan announced on August 31 that Armenia is suspending its diplomatic ties with Hungary.    

Ramil Safarov’s pardoning is condemned by virtually all international organizations.