Iran welcomes Armenia-Azerbaijan ceasefire agreement

“The Islamic Republic of Iran welcomes Russia’s mediation between Azerbaijan and Armenia and the acceptance of the ceasefire on the part of the sides to the Karabakh dispute,” the Iranian president’s chief of staff, Mahmoud Vaezi said in a post on his Twitter account on Tuesday. Vaezi reiterated that Iran’s position was that countries had to respect internationally-recognized borders and citizenship rights.“We believe,” the Iranian official said, “that if the sides… remain committed to international law, including on the territorial integrity of countries and citizenship rights, negotiations and [the pursuance of] a political solution will be able to end this long-running dispute.”He hoped that the ceasefire agreement would be implemented. The leaders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Russia signed a statement late on Monday to end the war in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region. The ceasefire agreement came into effect overnight. Azerbaijan and Armenia had been fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh since September 27. Russia several times attempted to mediate an end to the war. The contested region, home to ethnic Armenian people, is internationally recognized as Azerbaijani territory, but it has been under the control of Armenian-backed separatists since the early 1992, when they broke from Azerbaijan in a war that killed some 30,000 people. Iran, which shares borders with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, has previously offered to mediate between the two countries. Most recently, the Islamic Republic put forward a specific peace initiative to end the conflict. Source: Press TV