Agreement reached on peacekeeping forces in Nagorno Karabakh - UPDATE

An agreement on peacekeeping forces to be deployed in Nagorno Karabakh has been reached.

According to the agreement, they will not be from co-chairing or regional countries, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told media.

He said the deployment has been included in the basic principles for the conflict settlement.

"The Nagorno Karabakh conflict must be resolved stage-by-stage and all stages are interrelated," he said. "The basic principles for the conflict settlement were determined at the G8 meeting in Canada. First of all, the Armenian troops must be withdrawn from the occupied territories. All communications and roads must be opened. Then, the earlier occupied territories must be restored. The internally displaced people must return to their native land. The peacekeeping forces must be deployed."

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The OSCE Minsk Group arrived in the region with no new proposals on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told reporters.

He said Azerbaijan’s position was once again restated at the meetings with the co-chairs.

"Following the meeting in Baku, the co-chairs plan to visit Nagorno-Karabakh and then Yerevan," he said. "The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia, Mammadyarov, Sergei Lavrov, and Edward Nalbandian, will meet in Moscow on June 11 to discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan will meet in Kazan in late June.

Mammadyarov said some questions regarding the "road map" remain open and these issues should continue to be turned over so that resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict may begin.

The Armenian armed forces should be withdrawn from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan to prevent war, he stressed.

"It was repeatedly stressed that the snipers should be withdrawn, but if the Armenian armed forces withdraw from these territories, then snipers will change their positions," he said.


/Trend/