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Bryza: Impossible to make prediction on course of Karabakh talks

18 November 2016 09:58 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Farid Mirzayev – APA. Matthew Bryza, former US co-chair of the Minsk Group and former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, said on Friday that it is impossible to make a prediction on the course of negotiations over the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“How should I know how the process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict’s settlement will develop, when God is unaware of it either?” the former envoy told reporters in Baku Nov. 18.

He noted that progress can be achieved in the conflict’s settlement, in case President-elect Donal Trump thinks of peace.

A peaceful solution can not be achieved without meetings between the presidents and foreign ministers of the conflicting sides, added Bryza.

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.