Armenia and Azerbaijan were supposed to choose the format for settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict; this is the reason for the composition of parties to the statement and the reason why they didn’t pay attention to Iran’s plan for settlement of the conflict. This is what Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov said, RIA Novosti reported.

“Now is not the time to think about who managed to or failed to manage to help the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and when. Now it is important to think about how it is possible to implement all the agreements and turn the region of confrontation into a region for co-existence, better yet, a region for friendly and neighborly ties and cooperation,” the minister said in an interview with Iran’s state television and radio company, responding to the question why there was no attention paid to Iran’s peace plan.

“In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, we were guided by the aspiration to put an end to the bloodshed. The parties to the conflict, that is, Armenia and Azerbaijan, expressed interest in putting an end to the bloodshed through the mediation of the Russian Federation. As a matter of fact, during my years of service as foreign minister, I don’t recall a case when my Iranian counterparts have expressed interest in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” Lavrov added.

Lavov stated that he understands Iran’s concern since the normalization of relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia will have an impact on Iran’s transient interests.