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France voices readiness to host meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents

22 June 2016 11:04 (UTC+04:00)
France voices readiness to host meeting of Azerbaijani, Armenian presidents

By Gunay Camal

France, as a co-chair of the Minsk Group, is ready to host a meeting between President of Azerbaijan and President of Armenia, said the French Embassy in Baku.

The embassy made the statement following the St. Petersburg meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents.

Paris welcomes the outcome of the meeting, which took place in St Petersburg on June 20 and which has offered to President Aliyev and President Sargsyan the opportunity to pursue their dialogue started in Vienna on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, according to the embassy.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan sat at a table of talks arranged by Russian President Vladimir Putin after the recent worst violence in decades in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. It became their second meeting following the heavy clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh in early April.

The leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia agreed to bolster the number of monitors in Nagorno-Karabakh with a view to shore up a fragile ceasefire.

The presidents also emphasized that mutual understanding was achieved on a number of issues which will make possible to create conditions for the progress in the conflict’s settlement.

Presidents Aliyev and Sargsyan further pointed out the importance of their regular contacts on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and agreed to continue those contacts in this format in addition to the work of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, who were invited to the final part of the St. Petersburg meeting, according to the Kremlin.

The French embassy further announced that it’s only through a steady and frank dialogue between Azerbaijan and Armenia that a peaceful solution to the conflict will be found.

“The Minsk Group co-chairs will continue to perform their duties as mediators between the two parties to the conflict and will pursue their efforts towards the implementation of confidence building measures and the conclusion of a comprehensive and peaceful settlement of the conflict,” the statement reads.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions.

Over the entire period of its existence, the OSCE Minsk Group, which acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, failed to move forward in resolving the long lasting conflict.

When the situation in the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region has exploded unexpectedly following Armenia’s provocation, the international community, including the mediators realized danger of a status-quo and the urgency of solving the conflict.

Earlier, U.S .Ambassador to Azerbaijan Robert Cekuta, commenting on the St. Petersburg meeting, announced that the United States supports peaceful resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

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