Azernews.Az

BAKU – OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict will submit a report assessing their last year’s visit to the Armenia-occupied Azerbaijani territories to President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday, the OSCE Minsk Group’s Russian co-chair has said.

Igor Popov, who arrived in Baku on Monday, said the report would also be submitted to the Armenian president during the mediators’ further visit to Yerevan.

A mission of the Minsk Group co-chairs visited the occupied territories surrounding Azerbaijan’s Nagorno Karabakh region October 7-13, 2010. Three technical experts, including two from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), assisted them in their tasks. The co-chairs familiarized themselves with the current situation in the territories, in all aspects, including humanitarian needs.

Popov said the goal of the co-chairs’ visit to the region is to continue holding talks on Karabakh conflict settlement, adding that talks with Azerbaijani leaders will be held on Tuesday.

According to him, Armenian troops’ killing a nine-year-old Azerbaijani child on March 8 will be discussed during the meetings.

The Minsk Group co-chairs will head to Yerevan on Wednesday. As for a visit to Nagorno Karabakh, an Azerbaijani region where ethnic Armenians are running a self-proclaimed republic, Popov said there was currently no accurate information to that end.

Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a brutal war that ended with the signing of a fragile cease-fire in 1994. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been occupied by Armenian armed forces since then. Peace talks have largely accomplished no result so far.

The status of the Nagorno Karabakh region 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 status of Nagorno Karabakh be determined within Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, while Armenia insists that self-determination is the core principle for a settlement of the dispute.