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On June 10 Armen Rustamyan, Chairman of the NA Standing Committee on Foreign Relations, received Charles Lonsdale, Ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Laurie Bristow, Director of the Eastern Europe and Central Asia Directorate of the Foreign Office of Great Britain.

At the guests’ request Mr. Rustamyan touched upon the meeting of the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev by the mediation of the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to be held in Kazan, the Armenian-Turkish relations and the NK issue. The Committee Chairman noted that in the upcoming meeting to be held in Kazan the sides should conduct works of agreement on already last version of the document being proposed for the settlement.

According to his approach, if the parties negotiate, they should have negotiating views, and the negotiations suppose concessions, about which it is only Armenia to speak about it. As to the Azerbaijani side’s assessment, their biggest compromise is that they don’t commence war. While to Mr. Rustamyan’s mind, peace is necessary for both Armenia and Azerbaijan, and in general, for the international community. In Mr. Rustamyan’s word, Azerbaijan’s toughening of the positions is also the consequence of the circumstance that Turkey seeks to get opportunities of direct intervention in the process of the NK conflict settlement.

The aim of the Armenian-Turkish relations’ normalization was also the fact that those two issues would not be inter-connected, but because of Turkey’s position, which exclusively connected the process with the NK issue settlement, it was not possible to realize. In Mr. Rustamyan’s convictions, Turkey tries to use even the suspended process of the Armenian-Turkish protocols in order to push forward its problems. Speaking about the level of the public awareness on the settlement process, Mr. Rustamyan expressed conviction that the societies should be prepared for peace, but not for war, whereas, in Azerbaijan they were doing the opposite.

Other issues of bilateral interest were also discussed at the meeting.