TODAY.AZ / Politics

Baku wants peace for Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

16 March 2015 [16:17] - TODAY.AZ

/By AzerNews/


By Mushvig Mehdiyev

Azerbaijan has once again voiced its willingness to be actively involved in negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace project, in an effort to succeed in brokering a breakthrough agreement towards the resolution of the conflict.

Foreign Minister, Elmar Mammadyarov said Azerbaijan is ready to start working on a peace agreement in view of solving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict based on a specific timetable, at a meeting with Rapporteur of the Political Affairs Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Robert Walter on March 13.

Mammadyarov noted that as a first step towards the conflict resolution, Armenian armed forces must withdraw from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan in keeping with international law and UNSC resolutions.

"Armenia continues to demonstrate a non-constructive position, to carry out an aggressive policy and to protract the settlement of the conflict," he noted.

Focusing on the negotiation process attempting to settle the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict via the mediation of the co-chairs of Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Minsk Group, the diplomats exchanged their respective views.

The Minsk Group of the OSCE stands for a mediation role to achieve an end to the festering Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between the two neighboring South Caucasus nations. Peaceful settlement of the conflict is a top priority for the group and an armed attempt to solve the issue is unequivocally inadmissible in the group's agenda. Nonetheless, the Minsk Group has not yet achieved peace, despite over two decades of acting as a conciliator.

Meanwhile, the U.S. ambassador to Baku reiterated the White House's support to the efforts exerted by the OSCE Minsk Group toward the settlement of the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Robert Cekuta emphasized the OSCE Minsk Group is an important format and that the settlement of the conflict lies on both actors' shoulders.

"The parties should have a political will in light of ensuring a progress in the conflict’s settlement,” said Cekuta.

He added that the U.S., in turn, will keep on supporting all negotiation endeavors conducted by the OSCE Minsk Group.

The U.S has recently shown more eagerness towards resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in view of violent flare-ups. The White House made clear it did not view the arrest and subsequent sentencing of two Azerbaijani nationals by Armenia as a healthy development.

Through both the Minsk Group and its officials, the U.S. called on Yerevan to surrender both prisoners back to Baku, and end its aggressive stance towards Azerbaijan. Washington made clear that the handover of the prisoners is the only acceptable way forward.

Armenia and Azerbaijan remain locked in a bitter territorial dispute over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which Armenia-backed separatists seized from Azerbaijan in a bloody war in the early 1990s.

Azerbaijan's internationally recognized Nagorno-Karabakh territory was turned into a battlefield and zone of aggravated tensions after Armenia sent its troops to occupy Azerbaijan's lands. As a result, 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory stands under military occupation. For the past two decades, and despite calls from the international community, Armenia has refused to withdraw its troops and retreat within its national borders.

The two countries signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Russia, France and the U.S. are currently holding peace negotiations.

URL: http://www.today.az/news/politics/139241.html

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