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Hoagland: Co-chairs unaware of any date set for meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents

02 May 2017 08:46 (UTC +04:00)

The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs are not aware of any date set for a meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents, the OSCE Minsk Group's U.S. Co-Chair, Richard Hoagland, told APA on Tuesday.

“The meeting in Moscow on April 28 was a trilateral meeting hosted by Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov with Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Mammadyarov and Armenia’s Foreign Minister Nalbandian. I would refer you to the statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry,” he said.

Earlier, there were reports that organizing a meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents would be discussed today during the meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers in Moscow.

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.