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OSCE MG co-chairs expected to meet with reps of Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh

21 October 2016 09:53 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Ramiz Mikayiloglu – APA. As part of their visit to the region, OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are expected to meet with representatives of the “Azerbaijani Community of Nagorno-Karabakh” Public Union, Bayram Safarov, public union chairman, told reporters on Friday.

He said the date of the co-chairs’ visit isn’t known yet, but the meeting with representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh is usually included in the visit program.

Safarov denied the possibility of a meeting between representatives of the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh in the near future.

He noted that the current criminal regime in Armenia whose hands are strained with the blood of Azerbaijanis and the Armenian lobby impedes contacts between the Azerbaijani and Armenian communities.

“They know that if they hold such meetings, the intelligent and educated members of the Armenian community will agree to live within Azerbaijan,” Safarov added. “The Armenians have for nearly two centuries lived in a friendly neighborhood with the Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh. They acknowledged that the conflict was provoked by Armenian authorities and lobby.”

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.