ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
May 24, 2005 Tuesday 9:47 AM Eastern Time

Ukraine doesn’t rule out sending of peacekeepers to Karabakh

Vitali Matarykin

ZHITOMIR, May 24 – Secretary of Ukrainian National Defence and
Security Council Pyotr Poroshenko said in Zhitomir on Tuesday he did
not rule out a possibility of sending Ukrainian peacekeepers to the
zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, provided there are no
objectives from all the parties to the conflict.

According to Poroshenko, the participation of Ukraine’s peacekeepers
in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was discussed
during a recent visit of the Ukrainian foreign minister to
Azerbaijan.

The conflict began in 1988 when the Regional Council of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Region, as a constituent region of the Azerbaijan
Soviet Socialist Republic, made a decision to ask the Supreme
Councils of Azerbaijan and Armenian Soviet Socialist Republics to
join Armenia.

Azerbaijan condemned this decision and an armed conflict broke out.
Russia brokered a ceasefire in the area in May 1994.