AzerNews Weekly, Azerbaijan
March 12 2010

Sarkozy: Armenia, Azerbaijan should reach compromise on Garabagh

12-03-2010 06:37:16
Yerevan and Baku should reach compromise for the resumption of the
`peace dynamics’ of the Upper (Nagorno) Garabagh problem, French
President Nicolas Sarkozy said.
He expressed this view at talks with Armenian leader Serzh Sargsyan
held in the Elysee Palace on Wednesday, according to Russian news
agency Itar-Tass.
`Each party should exert every effort, reach compromise for the
resumption of the peace dynamics of the settlement of the conflict (in
Upper Garabagh),’ Sarkozy stressed. He noted that the `initiative
launched a year and a half ago in this sphere has weakened.’
France, along with Russia and the United States, is co-chair of the
OSCE Minsk Group created in 1992 for the settlement of the conflict.
It has been the second meeting of Sarkozy with Sargsyan after the
current president of Armenia took office in April 2008. Sargsyan paid
his first working visit to Paris in November 2008.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with the
signing of a cease-fire in 1994, but Armenia continues to occupy Upper
Garabagh and seven other Azerbaijani districts in defiance of
international law. Despite numerous rounds of OSCE-brokered
negotiations, peace talks have been fruitless so far and refugees
remain stranded. Baku says the occupied districts must be freed and
Azerbaijani refugees displaced during the armed conflict in the early
1990s returned home, and only after that could the status of Upper
Garabagh be determined within the territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan.*