OSCE MG visits region with initiative to organize presidential meeting
By Sara Rajabova
Azerbaijan’s high-ranking official has said the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs visited the region to activate negotiations on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
“Over the past half a year, and maybe even earlier, there has been no significant, noticeable progress in the settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” said Novruz Mammadov, deputy head of the Azerbaijani Presidential Administration and chief of the administration’s foreign relations department.
Speaking to reporters on July 24, the top official said the visit of the OSCE MG co-chairs to the region is related to that. He noted that certain steps are being taken, but as of now they have no visible result.
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.
Warlick said during his Baku visit that the possibility of a meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia later this year is currently being discussed.
Mammadov further said the co-chairs visited the region and took an initiative to organize meetings between foreign ministers and presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia.
“Neither the Azerbaijani president, nor the Azerbaijani side refuses any meetings related to this issue,” Mammadov said.
He went on to add that the Azerbaijani president, however, has his own stance on this issue and cited the president as saying, “I am ready to meet, but those meetings should not be held just for the sake of meeting.”
Mammadov further stressed that Azerbaijan waits from the West and European countries to demonstrate its position on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within the specific legal framework .
"But, unfortunately, they do not and cannot do," he said.
Armenia occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, after laying territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor that caused a brutal war in the early 1990s. Long-standing efforts by U.S, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.
As a result of the military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 are reported missing and almost 100,000 were injured, and 50,000 were disabled.
The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.
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