YEREVAN. - Foreign Minister of Armenia Edward Nalbandian on Wednesday received Chairperson of Sub-Committee on Conflicts between Council of Europe Member States, co-rapporteur on Azerbaijan, Stefan Schennach.

Nalbandian briefed the guest on the efforts of Armenia and OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing states towards the exclusively peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict. He stressed that unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan continuously refuses the proposals aimed at creating relevant conditions for advancing the negotiation process by the co-chairing countries. Besides, it refuses to implement the agreements reached at Vienna and Saint Petersburg summits in respect of creating incident investigation mechanisms and expanding the office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office.

Apart from this, FM Nalbandian stressed that the normalization of the issue is going on in the format of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship, which is the only internationally mandated institution to deal with the conflict settlement.

Furthermore, he added that the attempts to shift the discussions regarding Karabakh to other formats and platform, as well as those to initiate resolutions distorting the reality in different institutions and create mechanisms parallel with the settlement harm the efforts of the co-chairs to reach a settlement, which the co-chairs themselves have warned on different occasions. This warning should also be seriously considered in PACE, Nalbandian said.