The status quo in respect of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable and unstable, Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told a joint press conference with his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Baku on Monday.
“We today discussed Russia’s role in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. I informed my Russian counterpart about the latest results of the negotiations on the conflict’s resolution,” said Mammadyarov.
The Azerbaijani foreign minister noted that he had recently held discussions on concrete topics in Moscow.
“I told Lavrov that there are a number of approaches that can lead to progress on this issue. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs have repeatedly stated that no one accepts the current situation on the contact line of troops,” added Mammadyarov.
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.