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Lukashevich: Co-chairs are not wizards, they cannot ensure desired level of security in region

19 July 2017 13:30 (UTC +04:00)

There is a great need to expand the office of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, to increase its monitoring capabilities on the contact line of troops, Russia’s permanent representative to the OSCE Alexander Lukashevich said on Wednesday, APA’s Moscow correspondent reported.

"Unfortunately, such resolutions can not be achieved due to the contradictory positions of the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the absence of a compromise,” he said. “I think that in the near future it is hardly possible to do more than the OSCE Minsk Group, who are actively working with the parties to the conflict.”

He recalled that the co-chairs have recently held a meeting with the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Brussels.

“There are some suggestions that the presidents of these countries can meet. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are actively working with the parties to the conflict, but the co-chairmen are not wizards, and they can not establish the necessary level of security in the region. The first and foremost is to maintain the dialogue, to make sure the parties do not go over to military operations, to make sure no serious problem arises against the efforts to resolve this protracted conflict,” added Lukashevich.

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.