OSCE completes mission in disputed Nagorno-Karabakh enclave

Associated Press Worldstream
February 7, 2005 Monday

BAKU, Azerbaijan — Officials from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe left the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave Monday after
completing a fact-finding mission as part of efforts to resolve the
territory’s status and end a long-running dispute between Armenia
and Azerbaijan.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Metin Mirza said the mission from the
so-called Minsk Group would report back to the main body of the OSCE
before a final report is issued.

The four-day OSCE mission was investigating, among other things,
whether ethnic Armenians are settling in occupied territories around
the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s has been
trying to help the two countries reach a settlement for enclave,
which since the mid-1990s has been under the control of ethnic
Armenian forces. The forces also occupy some territory adjacent to
Nagorno-Karabakh proper.

A cease-fire in the conflict was reached in 1994, but
Nagorno-Karabakh’s political status remains unsettled. Its ethnic
Armenian government is not recognized internationally, and Baku
insists it must remain part of Azerbaijan.

Mirza also said Azerbaijan would again seek to the have the U.N.
General Assembly discuss the status of the enclave.

Meanwhile, in Nagorno-Karabakh, officials said the mission met in the
enclave’s main city, Stepanakert, with Armenian refugees who were
driven out of Azerbaijan during the six-year war in the 1990s that
killed some 30,000 people and sent 1 million fleeing from their homes.