YEREVAN. Oct 22 (Interfax) - Yerevan has called on Baku and Ankara to avoid provocations that could result in a collapse of efforts to establish a ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh and to abide by the agreements reached through the mediation of the presidents of the countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group.
"We call on Azerbaijan and its supporter Turkey not to undermine the efforts of the international community to establish a verifiable ceasefire regime, and not to engage in their traditional policy of blame shifting [onto the Armenian side]," the Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Armenia has always ruled out a military solution to the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, it said.
"The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved exclusively by peaceful means, within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairmanship, which holds an international mandate. The Republic of Armenia consistently supports the unconditional implementation of the agreements on the cessation of hostilities set in the statements reached on October 10 and October 17," the ministry said.
It also dismissed as "manipulative" the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry's statement in which Baku tries to attribute the position of Azerbaijan and Turkey rejecting a peaceful solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to the Armenian side.
On Wednesday, in response to Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan's statement that the Karabakh issue does not have a diplomatic solution at this stage, the Foreign Ministry of Azerbaijan said that "Nikol Pashinyan has openly confessed that Armenia is continuing its aggressive policy and that the current leadership of this country is not interested in settling the conflict through talks."
Pashinyan said earlier on Wednesday that "the issue of Karabakh, at least at this stage and for a very long time starting from this stage, cannot have a diplomatic solution."
Armenia has always said it is ready to resolve the problem based on a mutual compromise, he said.
"This means we can scale down our requirements for the sake of resolving this problem, but only on the condition that the other side also scale down its requirements. However, experience has shown that everything that's acceptable to Armenia is no longer acceptable to Azerbaijan. This means that it makes no sense to talk about a diplomatic solution, at least at the current stage," Pashinyan said.