Baku stresses importance of Karabakh conflict resolution to new EU rep
By Jamila Babayeva
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict resolution was in focus of new EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Herbert Salber's meetings with top officials in Azerbaijan.
Salber has replaced French diplomat Philippe Lefort in this post and his visit to Azerbaijan aimed at closely familiarization with the situation in the region.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev received a delegation led by Salber on July 23.
President Aliyev congratulated Salber on his appointment and expressed confidence that the visit would be a good chance to get closely familiarized with the situation in the region, AzerTag state news agency reported.
The head of state touched on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and noted that the country supported the peaceful settlement of the dispute.
President Aliyev said Armenia demonstrated destructive position and ignored both international law and statements of the leaders of the co-chair states.
The president noted that Azerbaijan's lands recognized by the international community still had been under the occupation due to the conflict and pointed out if the problem was not settled justly and within the international law, the situation in the region would become more complicated.
Salber, in turn, said he had visited the region several times and got familiarized with the current situation.
He said the EU intended to boost the cooperation with Azerbaijan and make its contribution to the settlement of the conflicts in the region.
On the same day, Defense Minister, Colonel General Zakir Hasanov met a delegation led by Herbert Salber.
The sides discussed the military-political situation in the region, the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and other issues of mutual interest.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.
The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.
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 and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.