It is planned to hold a meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian parliamentarians in the French Senate, André Reichardt, president of the France-Caucasus Friendship Group in the French Senate, told a press conference in Baku March 13, APA reported.
He noted that the French Senate’s president has already given a positive opinion of the meeting.
“We can take positive steps in this direction. The meeting’s date is still unknown because for the time being it is only an initiative. However, we have gotten approval from the Senate’s president. Once the presidents confirm this decision, we can give accurate information about the location and the date,” added the senator.
Reichardt mentioned that the issue was brought up during the time of the previous president of the Senate but the meeting did not take place.
“Our primary expectation is that some positive progress be made towards settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict which has a negative impact on regional stability and keeps the tension on. We expect to be able to take certain steps at the meeting to eliminate these negatives,” 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 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.
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