The purpose of substantive Karabakh settlement negotiations is to change the status quo and to free the occupied Azerbaijani territories, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry press secretary Hikmet Hajiyev said.


"Although the media knows little, substantive negotiations [on the Karabakh conflict settlement] are still in progress. As the chiefs of states co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group have said, these negotiations are due to end with a change of the status quo and liberation of the occupied Azerbaijani lands," Hajiyev told Interfax, commenting on remarks of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.


"There is no need to invent a new formula or equation for settling this conflict," Hajiyev said.


The legal and political fundamentals of the conflict settlement process have been known for a long time; they derive from UN Security Council resolutions, norms and principles of international law and the Helsinki Final Act, he said. "The right of nations to self-determination declared by the Helsinki Final Act should be provided without any damage to the territorial integrity of the country," Hajiyev said.


In the opinion of the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Armenia has been trying to damage the conflict settlement process by means of various causes and provocations. "Azerbaijan, which has been subjected to occupation by Armenia, is the side interested in the soonest resolution of the conflict. Being adherent to the spirit of meetings held in Vienna and St. Petersburg, we support a substantive solution of the problem," Hajiyev said.


Kerry said at the eighth annual forum organized by the Aspen Institute and the Atlantic weekly in Washington on Thursday that conditions for settling the Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia were yet to take shape. He described the Karabakh conflict as frozen and said it was not possible to resolve the conflict for now because the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan were not ready to do so.

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