Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

The U.S. fully supports the peaceful settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Bridget Brink, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, made the remarks at a press conference in Baku on February 7.

“The conflict has been going on for more than 20 years, which is a long time. As you know, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs are in Baku to discuss this issue,” she said.

The U.S., along with Russia and France, is a co-chair country of the OSCE Minsk Group established to broker peace to the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The three co-chairs of the Minsk Group – Igor Popov of Russia, Stephane Visconti of France and Andrew Schofer of the U.S. – as well as the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk, came to the Azerbaijani capital to meet with the country's officials for the talks on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict’s resolution. After Baku, the co-chairs will visit Yerevan.

Armenia broke out a lengthy war against Azerbaijan by laying territorial claims on the country. 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.

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

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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