OSCE MG’s U.S. co-chair starts visit to S.Caucasus
By Sara Rajabova
The U.S. co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group has started his next visit to the South Caucasus region to discuss the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
James Warlick wrote on his official Twitter page that he arrived in Yerevan on September 15.
Warlick also added that on September 16 he will meet with senior government officials in Armenia.
He recently said the OSCE Minsk Group expects a trilateral meeting of the presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia and France in Paris in late October.
Earlier, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said Warlick will visit the region to arrange a meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers.
Mammadyarov said he would meet with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian during the session of the UN General Assembly in New York in late September.
For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in the 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. A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions calling on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.