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APA (13 November 2017)

A meeting between the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and co-rapporteurs of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Monitoring Committee for Azerbaijan and Armenia, which was scheduled to be held in Paris on November 16, has been postponed indefinitely, APA has learned.

The Paris meeting was postponed as the Minsk Group co-chairs are due to hold a meeting with the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers in Moscow on November 16.

The decision on the Paris meeting was made on October 10 at a meeting of the PACE Monitoring Committee’s Sub-Committee on Conflicts between Council of Europe member states. Andrzej Kasprzyk, the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office was also to be present at the meeting.

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.