Yerevan hopes for rapprochement with Baku on the issue of returning the unrecognized Karabakh republic to the negotiating table, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Russian reporters on Friday.

“I hope for rapprochement with Azerbaijan regarding the return of Karabakh to the negotiating table,” Pashinyan noted.

However, the head of the Armenian Cabinet said that he was not going to set preconditions for talks on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

While Pashinyan is not going to postpone the process until Stepanakert is involved in the negotiations. At the same time, the prime minister promised not to slow down the talks with Azerbaijan on Karabakh, but also not to force them.

“We neither will not force this process nor slow it down, because there is a conflict, and I don’t think it is advisable to forget about it,” he said.

According to him, the Karabakh issue can be resolved only by returning Nagorno-Karabakh to the negotiation process. At the same time, he noted that Moscow has the necessary levers to prevent possible new escalation in the region.

“I am sure that Russia has all the levers to prevent escalation in the Nagorno-Karabakh region,” he said.