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Baku comments on OSCE chairâ€™s meeting with Karabakh illegal regime rep

30 June 2016 10:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku – APA. OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, Germany’s Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has met in Yerevan with representative of the illegal regime of Azerbaijan’s occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region Bako Sahakyan, as part of his meeting with the Armenian community of the region, Hikmat Hajiyev, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, told APA on June 30.

During his visit to Baku, Steinmeier will also meet with representatives of the Azerbaijani community of the Nagorno-Karabakh region and visit a residential area constructed for IDPs.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in Dec.1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1994.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.