Iran's FM Departs Shanghai for Armenia

Moscow, Nov 8, IRNA – Iranian Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi left Saint Petersburg on Monday and departed for Armenian capital Yerevan. Salehi was in Saint Petersburg to attend the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Prime Ministers Conference on Monday. Salehi is scheduled to meet the Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian, there. He is to discuss the bilateral relations as well as regional and international developments with his counterpart. The Karabakh issue would be also discussed in the meeting between Nalbandian and Salehi. Despite facing strong international pressure, the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders failed to agree on the basic principles of ending the Karabakh conflict based on the solution put forward by Russia, the United States, and France. The Kazan meeting was the ninth Armenian-Azerbaijani summit hosted by Medvedev in the last three years. In November 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced Tehran's readiness to help resolve the territorial dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Karabakh region. 'We believe that the Karabakh issue will be resolved through dialogue and the commitment of both sides to justice, and Tehran is ready to negotiate with them within this framework,' Ahmadinejad said in a joint press conference with his Azeri counterpart at the time. Armenia and Azerbaijan remain officially at war over Karabakh and the dispute is a major source of tension in the South Caucasus region wedged between Iran, Russia and Turkey. No country - not even Armenia - officially recognizes Karabakh as an independent state./end