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OSCE to monitor contact line of Azerbaijani, Armenian troops

07 December 2016 07:12 (UTC +04:00)

The OSCE is expected to monitor the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops on December 8, said Azerbaijan’s Defense Ministry on December 7.

The monitoring will be held under the mandate of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Personal Representative along the line of contact in the direction of Azerbaijan’s Aghdam district, said the ministry.

On the Azerbaijani side, the monitoring will be conducted by field assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Jiri Aberle, Peter Swedberg and Simon Tiller.

In the territory of Azerbaijan occupied and controlled by Armenian armed forces, the monitoring will be held by field assistants of the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Ghenadie Petrica and Hristo Hristov.

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.