Russia to be main organizer of planned meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents

Russia to be main organizer of planned meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents
# 17 July 2017 08:12 (UTC +04:00)

Russia will be the main organizer of a meeting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev with his Armenian counterpart Serzh Sargsyan, which is planned to be held by the end of this year, a source in the Russian Foreign Ministry told Izvestia newspaper, APA reported.

“Moscow will be the main mediator in this matter, as the attempts of the other OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs – the US and France – to resume the talks between Baku and Moscow failed,” said the source.

France’s attempts to bring the Azerbaijani and Armenian leaders to the negotiating table also failed, according to the source.

“Meanwhile, the maintenance of dialogue is of fundamental importance. Due to this, a full-scale war did not break out in the region. However, the goals and visions of the sides are still different,” the source told Izvestia newspaper.

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 December 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 1996.

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.

Nagorno Garabagh

#
#

THE OPERATION IS BEING PERFORMED