OSCE MG welcomes presidents’ willingness to meet

By Sara Rajabova - AzerNews 

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs has welcomed the willingness of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents to meet later this year, following a visit to Armenia and Azerbaijan aimed at facilitating the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Co-Chairs Igor Popov of the Russia, James Warlick of the United States, and Pierre Andrieu of France traveled to Yerevan and Baku to meet Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk also participated in the meetings, the official site of OSCE reported.

"During our visit to Yerevan and Baku, we noted recent high-level meetings and discussed with each president current proposals to advance negotiations towards a lasting settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. We welcomed the readiness of the presidents to meet each other later this year, and they instructed their foreign ministers to continue their work with the co-chairs on an agenda for the presidential summit," the statement reads.

The presidents repeated their commitment to exchange data on missing persons under the auspices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to report.

The co-chairs also traveled to Vienna to brief the members of the Minsk Group.

At a press conference in Baku on July 23, Warlick mentioned that the issue of continued respect for the ceasefire to prevent further violence was raised during the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs’ visits to the region.

Warlick added that the possibility of a meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia later this year is currently being discussed.

He further said the deployment of peacekeeping forces in Nagorno-Karabakh has been under discussion for years, adding that it would need to be a part of any comprehensive settlement.

The co-chair also said the past several months have been a period of relative quiet.

“We want that period to continue as a base for trust and furthering a negotiated settlement,” Warlick added.

He also voiced concern over Azerbaijani hostages in prison in Armenia, adding that the position of the U.S. government on the matter has not changed.

Armenian special forces killed Azerbaijani citizen Hasan Hasanov and took Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov hostage in the Shaplar village in the occupied Kalbajar region in July 2014, while they were visiting the graves of their relatives. Following an expedited “judicial process," Dilgam Asgarov was sentenced to life imprisonment, and Shahbaz Guliyev to 22 years.

In the meantime, Popov expressed hope that the negotiations process will be intensified.

“We hope for next meetings. The date of the meetings isn’t known yet,” he said.

The latest meeting between Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan took place in Paris, France last October through an initiative by the French president.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. After a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France, and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.

The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.