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OSCE MG co-chairs to arrive in Baku on Oct. 7

03 October 2017 11:43 (UTC +04:00)

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will arrive in Baku on Oct. 7, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov announced on Oct. 3.

The mediators on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be on a visit to Yerevan on Oct. 6, Mammadyarov told a press conference following his meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Pavlo Klimkin in Baku, APA reported.

"The co-chairs are coming to the region to discuss a possible meeting of the presidents of the two countries. They proposed in New York that there be substantive, logical negotiations. They suggest that we hold logical negotiations after the meeting of the presidents and give an impetus to the issue,” added Mammadyarov.

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.