Azernews.Az

By Aisha Jabbarova

A group of Turkish military specialists have arrived in Azerbaijan to help with demining in the recently liberated lands, the Defence Ministry reported on December 16.

The group on the detection and clearance of mines consists of 136 servicemen of the Turkish Armed Forces.

The first group of Turkish sappers arrived in early December.

Turkey’s Vice President Fuat Oktay said in late November that Turkish soldiers would begin their missions in Azerbaijan under a bill recently adopted in the Turkish parliament.

The Turkish military servicemen will operate within the Russian-Turkish joint monitoring centre in Nagorno-Karabakh for one year.

On November 10, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Russia-brokered agreement to end fighting in Karabakh and work towards a comprehensive solution.

The November peace agreement ended the 30-years-old conflict between Baku and Yerevan over Azerbaijan’s Nagorno-Karabakh region that along with the seven adjacent regions came under the occupation of Armenian armed forces in the war in the 1990s. For nearly three decades, Armenia failed to implement the UN Security Council resolutions (822, 853, 874 and 884) demanding the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of its troops, which was the main obstacle to the resolution of the conflict.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the United States, Russia and France had been mediating the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict since the signing of the volatile cease-fire agreement in 1994. The Minsk Group’s efforts resulted in no progress as Armenia refused to abide by the UN Security Council resolutions.

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