Azernews.Az

OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh offered several proposals for measures "to enhance confidence" between the parties to the long-standing dispute during their visit to the region on October 21-24.

The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs stressed the need to improve significantly the atmosphere of negotiations, increase trust, and strengthen implementation of the 1994 ceasefire to allow further progress toward reaching a peaceful settlement, says a statement issued Monday by Bernard Fassier of France, Robert Bradtke of the United States and Igor Popov of Russia.

According to the statement, the sides agreed in principle on the draft mechanism to investigate incidents along the front lines that the co-chairs proposed in April, and which Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan and Russia's Dmitry Medvedev agreed to pursue in their March joint statement in Sochi.

The co-chairs and OSCE Chairperson’s Personal Representative Andrzej Kasprzyk traveled to the Armenian capital Yerevan, Azerbaijan’s occupied Nagorno Karabakh region and Baku. The co-chairs met with Presidents Sargsyan and Aliyev, and with the separatist leadership in Nagorno Karabakh.

They also met separately with Armenian Apostolic Church supreme head Garegin II and chairman of the Caucasus Muslim Board Sheykhulislam Allahshukur Pashazade to discuss "the necessity of preparing the populations for a just, lasting, and peaceful settlement".

Last Saturday, the co-chairs crossed the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops by foot for the fourth time in the past fourteen months. This crossing highlighted again that the Line is not a permanent barrier between neighboring peoples, and demonstrated that military coordination is possible when all the sides are willing, the co-chairs’ statement says.

The co-chairs will return to the region in late November to continue their work with the sides to develop the mentioned measures and to determine next steps to pave the way for future meetings between the sides, it added.

Azerbaijan and Armenia waged a brutal war in the early 1990s. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory, including the Nagorno Karabakh region, has been under the occupation of Armenian armed forces since the 1994 ceasefire.

Peace talks are underway on the basis of the Madrid principles, a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs. The Madrid Document covers a return of the territories surrounding Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijani control, a future determination of the region’s legal status and the right of internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their homes.