EU seeks greater role in Karabakh settlement: Ashton
The European Union wants to play a greater role in assisting Azerbaijan and Armenia to reach a solution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has said.
"This conflict is very complicated, and it is pivotal to settle it," she said in her opening remarks at an EU Council meeting in Brussels.
Ashton said participants would discuss the situation in the South Caucasus, with the Karabakh conflict being one of the key issues on the agenda, as well as separately in each of the region’s countries - Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia.
"We will discuss what the EU can do to achieve a settlement of the conflict," she added.
The Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 over Armenia’s territorial claims. The ensuing war claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced up to a million Azerbaijanis. About 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory has been occupied by Armenian armed forces since a ceasefire was signed in 1994. Peace talks, brokered by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, have been largely fruitless so far.
This story is published by AzerNEWS Weekly under a project funded by the Foundation for State Assistance to the Development of the Media under the President of the Azerbaijan Republic.
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