Permanent mission of Azerbaijan to the United Nations organized the informal discussions of the UN Security Council (Arria Formula meeting) on topic "The peaceful settlement of disputes, conflict prevention and resolution: mediation, judicial settlement and justice".
The mission told that Security Council’s member states, UN’s other member states, UN secretariat, international governmental organizations, more than 120 representatives of civil society and scientific circles attended the meeting.
Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov and Professor at Cambridge University of the United Kingdom Malcolm Shaw delivered speeches at the discussions.
In his keynote speech, Azerbaijan’s Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Agshin Mehdiyev spoke about the significance of these discussions. He said that the meeting aimed to hold discussions on important issues such as peaceful settlement of disputes, prevention and settlement of conflicts, as well as to illustrate the role of mediation in propagandism of peace based on the continuous and international law, the role of settlement based on law and justice.
At first Professor Shaw presented a report on the settlement of international disputes, legal bases of mediation in prevention and settlement of conflicts and settlement mechanisms.
Then, in his speech, Azimov spoke about conflict situation, especially the mediating efforts taken in the context of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, shared his opinions on its different aspects, as well as the main factors of the successful mediation.
The other participants also delivered speech at the meeting. They spoke about the importance of prevention and settlement of the international disputes and conflicts, the role of the UN and regional organizations in this process, different initiatives put forward by the separate countries.
They noted the importance of UN General Assembly’s resolution 65/283 on "Strengthening the role of mediation in peaceful settlement of disputes, conflict prevention and resolution" adopted on June 22, 2011, from the point of view of peaceful settlement of conflicts, propagandism of the mediation efforts in conflict prevention and resolution and ensuring the useful rules for existing and future mediation.
The participants welcomed Azerbaijan’s such initiative to organize the discussions on such important topic.
Permanent Representative of Armenia to UN opposed the topic and spirit of discussions and attempted to distort the opinions sounded by the speakers. In particular, he said that the conflict occurred not between Azerbaijan and his country and accused Azerbaijan of reducing the mediating efforts on this conflict to the minimum.
In return, Azimov said that there were many evidences showing that the abovementioned conflict occurred only between Armenia and Azerbaijan: "It is sufficient to note two of them. Firstly, Armenian citizens serve in Azerbaijan’s occupied territories and the documents of captivated Armenian soldiers confirm this fact. Secondly, President of the Republic of Armenian participate as a conflict party in the negotiations on conflict settlement"- deputy minister underlined.
Due to the other moments noted by the Armenian representative, Azimov said that Armenia was the only country that didn’t join the consensus for resolution on "Strengthening the role of mediation in peaceful settlement of disputes, conflict prevention and resolution" adopted by UN General Assembly in 2011. In this case, the speech of this country’s representative about significance of mediating efforts sets wondering.