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30 June 2017

APA

Azerbaijan has expressed its consent to and readiness for the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs’ proposal about holding a meeting of the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hikmat Hajiyev told APA on Friday. 

He noted that the joint statement made following the Saint Petersburg meeting that took place at the level of presidents stressed the necessity of substantive talks between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“In this context, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, following their recent visit to the region, made a proposal to hold a meeting of the foreign ministers of the two countries. Azerbaijan has already expressed its consent to and readiness for this proposal,” the spokesperson said.

Azerbaijan has repeatedly expressed its readiness for substantive negotiations on an early resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the change of the inadmissible and unsustainable status quo, Hajiyev stressed. 

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.