Bryza: Russia takes leading role in resolving Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
By Rashid Shirinov
The United States is avoiding being too active in the ways that bother Russia, Matthew Bryza, former U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, told Trend on May 1.
Commenting on the meeting of the Foreign Ministers of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia held on April 28 in Moscow, Bryza called the meeting “the Moscow process”.
“This is a consistent continuation of Moscow’s efforts aimed at bringing positive changes in the Nagorno-Karabakh process,” Bryza said, recalling that a meeting in a similar format was held in May last year.
U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t have a policy towards the South Caucasus region, Bryza said, adding what Trump is doing is a continuation of Barack Obama’s policy of not paying attention to the region.
“Moscow has been trying to play a leadership role in the region after the Obama administration stopped paying top-level attention to South Caucasus. Obama thought the U.S. was too active in too many places around the world,” he added.
In early years of his administration, Obama had a foreign policy of restarting relations with Russia, and wanted to be less active, Bryza explained.
Russia along with the U.S. and France is a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group established to broker a peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a lengthy war that ended with signing of a fragile ceasefire in 1994. Since the war, 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.
While the OSCE Minsk Group acted as the only mediator in resolution of the conflict, the occupation of the territory of the sovereign state with its internationally recognized boundaries has been left out of due attention of the international community for years.
Armenia ignores four UN Security Council resolutions on immediate withdrawal from the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, thus keeping tension high in the region.
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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov
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