Azernews.Az

BAKU – Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has criticized the OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over the lack of progress in settling the long-standing dispute.

President Aliyev said in an interview with CIS TV channel Mir that Azerbaijan's stance on the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs’ work in resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is two-fold.

"On one hand, as someone who has been involved in this process [efforts to settle the Karabakh conflict] for the last seven years, I can see the mediating countries’ willingness to find a way out of the predicament that has emerged. We applaud this. On the other hand, the mediators’ 19-year-long activity has not accomplished anything."

The Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 due to Armenia’s territorial claims. Azerbaijan and Armenia waged a brutal war which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including Nagorno Karabakh and seven adjacent regions, has been under the occupation of the Armenian armed forces since a ceasefire was signed in 1994. Peace talks, brokered by the United States, Russia and France through the Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.

The president said that negotiations have been carried out in various formats so far and certain progress was achieved at different stages of the peace process. However, the negotiating process has either been deadlocked or produced no fruit -- either due to tragic developments in Armenia or Yerevan’s altering its stance on the previously agreed issues. Therefore, it would be wrong to positively assess the role of the mediators, who have not achieved any result.

"On the other hand, I can’t say that they are not doing anything at all. We therefore hope that the co-chairing countries -- and these are the world’s leading powers, permanent members of the UN Security Council -- will avail of their influence and political leverage to prompt the invading nation to pull out of the [Azerbaijani] territories it occupies," Aliyev said.

He said Baku is committed to the peace process, which is proven by its holding negotiations for nearly two decades.

Aliyev stressed that negotiations between Baku and Yerevan are underway on the basis of the renewed peace outline proposed by international mediators dubbed the Madrid principles. The Madrid Document ensures the right to self-determination of those currently living in Nagorno Karabakh and the people who will return there. It stipulates ending the occupation of Azerbaijani territories, a return of Azerbaijani displaced persons to those territories, including Nagorno Karabakh, restoring ties between Azerbaijan and Armenia as well as security guarantees, the president said.

"This is the format that is currently on the negotiating table. Certainly, there are nuances there, but, in a global sense, those principles are in question. If they are enforced, we will soon be able to talk about progress. Otherwise, the situation in the region could unfold under different scenarios."

The status of Nagorno Karabakh has been a stumbling block in peace talks. Baku says the occupied districts must be freed and Azerbaijani refugees returned home, and only after that could the region’s status be determined within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, while Armenia insists that self-determination is the core principle for a settlement of the dispute. The mediators are seeking a solution leaning simultaneously on both principles.