Situation in Nagorno-Karabakh remains highly flammable: PACE president

Situation in Nagorno-Karabakh remains highly flammable: PACE president
# 23 January 2017 13:08 (UTC +04:00)

In April 2016, there was a dangerous escalation of hostilities on the contact line in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, and the situation there still remains highly flammable, PACE President Pedro Agramunt said on Monday.

“From Europe's long and turbulent history, we have learned that conflicts cannot be resolved by military means. Our role as parliamentarians is crucial to achieve this,” Agramunt said addressing the opening of the PACE part-session in Strasbourg, APA’s Europe bureau reported.

“Parliamentary diplomacy is an important tool for dialogue and our Assembly must use its potential to the full,” Agramunt noted.

In early April 2016, all the frontier positions of Azerbaijan were subjected to heavy fire from the Armenian side, which used large-caliber weapons, mortars and grenade launchers. Azerbaijan responded with a counter-attack, which led to liberation of several strategic heights and settlements.

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.

Nagorno Garabagh

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