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Azerbaijan urges OSCE MG to force Armenia into peace talks

26 February 2017 09:19 (UTC +04:00)

The co-chairing countries and other members of the OSCE Minsk Group as well as the world’s leading nations should draw conclusions from the occupation policy of Armenia and force this country into peace talks, Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign Minister Khalaf Khalafov told reporters in Baku Feb. 26, APA reported.

He noted that Azerbaijan’s military potential allows to respond to any attack or provocative action of the enemy.

“If Armenia’s not forced into peace, if it doesn’t give up its policy of occupation and return the occupied lands, we’ll have to get our lands back by other means. We’re very close to this,” said Khalafov, stressing the need for an additional political impulse in the negotiation process in the near future.

“In case these efforts fail to bring Armenia to peace, the Armenian authorities will bear full responsible for the emergence of a new conflict in the region,” he warned.

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 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.