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Ambassador Cekuta discusses Karabakh conflict with U.S. co-chair of OSCE MG

07 November 2017 10:23 (UTC +04:00)

The United States continues to provide support to the leaders of the two countries for a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta.

The ambassador made the remarks during a meeting with members of the local community in a synagogue in the Jewish-populated Krasnaya Slobada (Red town) in Guba district, APA’s local bureau reported.

The ambassador said he has recently been in Washington and met with Andrew Schofer, the American co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

"We had discussions as to how to what should be done in order to move the settlement process forward. It’s a sign that the United States takes it seriously that when the new administration came in, they looked at a number of positions and whether or not to continue them – and one of the ones they continued was the co-chair of the Minsk Group process,” he added.

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.