Nagorno Garabagh

Home page

Nagorno Garabagh

Warlick: Vienna, St. Petersburg meetings opened up good opportunity for Karabakh conflict settlement

22 October 2016 09:10 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Malahat Najafova – APA. The meetings recently held in Vienna and St. Petersburg have opened up a good opportunity for the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, US co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick said at a press conference in Baku Oct. 22.

The co-chairs are ready to continue to work on resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said Warlick, noting that the topic of discussions in Baku and Yerevan will focus on further work and to continue meetings.

He noted they are looking forward to meeting with Azerbaijan’s president.

According to him, the US, Russia and France are working together to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict.

“We have recently met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow. All the three co-chairmen have one goal – to find a peaceful solution to the conflict,” added Warlick.

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.