BAKU. Sept 27 (Interfax) - The United States calls on Baku and Yerevan to resolve all disputes through talks and will continue facilitating efforts to establish a lasting peace between Azerbaijan and Armenia, U.S. Department of State spokesperson Ned Price said.
"The use of force is not an acceptable path. We've made that clear privately. We've also made that clear publicly, and we're glad that our continued engagement, including at high levels, including last week in New York, with both countries has helped to halt the hostilities, and we'll continue to engage and encourage the work needed to reach a lasting peace because there can be and there is no military solution to this conflict," the Department of State website quoted Price as saying at a press briefing.
At their meeting in New York on September 19, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov and his Armenian counterpart Ararat Mirzoyan "discussed the best path forward", and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken invited the sides to exchange ideas as to how to make significant headway in the peace process before the end of the month.
As regards Blinken's proposal to arrange the parties' meeting before the end of September, Price said that Baku and Yerevan will decide themselves where to meet and when.
"This will be up to the two countries to decide, but we do think that continued engagement directly between Armenia and Azerbaijan is not only in their interests, it's in the interests of the region and beyond. We have offered to be of assistance, again, bilaterally, trilaterally, multilaterally, and of course the EU is playing an important role as well," he said.
When commenting on a recent meeting in the U.S. between Azerbaijani presidential aide Hikmet Hajiyev and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Karen Donfried, Price said that regular contacts will continue.
"We are in regular contact with both Armenian and Azeri officials. That will continue," he said.
"Our task is to bring the sides together, to facilitate dialogue, to help the sides together work through differences, to work through disagreements peacefully and diplomatically," Price said.