Patriarch Kirill: Protection of religious monuments will allow to avoid escalation in Karabakh conflict

Baku. 25 October. REPORT.AZ/ It is necessary to protect monuments of religious significance in order to avoid escalation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Report informs, Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus Kirill said at the meeting of the Presidium of Interreligious Council of Russia.

He said that recently at his invitation religious leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia discussed the possibilities of the conflict settlement.

“We hosted the meeting which stressed the necessity to protect monuments of religious significance and respectful attitude to them. We expressed this principled position because we clearly understood that when a holy place is attacked a conflict break out with new force, the level of bitterness reaches critical scales”, he stated.

He pointed out that religious leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan “found within themselves a strength” to state that defacement of religious monuments and traditions cannot and should happen because in that case a conflict tends to get negative religious contest which may lead to greater ignition of confrontation.

Notably, meeting of religious leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia mediated by Russia took place at the residence of Patriarch in Moscow, September 8.