Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

French Senator André Reichardt has said a new President of France should pay a special attention to resolution of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The first round of the 2017 French presidential election is set to be held on April 23, 2017.

Reichardt, in an article published in Trombinoscope magazine, noted that despite resolutions of the UN Security Council and other leading international organizations, the occupation of Azerbaijan's Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions by Armenia continues, and over a million Azerbaijanis live as refugees and IDPs for 25 years.

“As a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, France should take an unbiased approach to the conflict and try to ensure a negotiation solution to the problem,” Reichardt said.

He further expressed readiness to meet with his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts to help move the negotiations forward.

France along with Russia and the U.S. is one of the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The MG mediators have so far failed to make any move to achieve a breakthrough in the peace process.

French co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Stephane Visconti has recently said that France is ready to host the meeting of the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Previously, at a meeting with French President François Hollande in mid-March, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev said that France, as the co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group, is making efforts to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and Azerbaijan highly appreciates these efforts.

President Hollande, in turn, stated that the status quo is unacceptable in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan laying territorial claims on 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. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and over 1 million were displaced as a result of the large-scale hostilities.

Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding districts.

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