Azernews.Az

By Nigar Orujova

A meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers Elmar Mammadyarov and Edward Nalbandian will be held in Paris on October 27, spokesman for the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry Elman Abdullayev said.

The ministers will discuss Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.

According to Pascal Meunier, the French Ambassador in Baku, Paris is making all efforts possible to resume contacts between Baku and Yerevan to advance a settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

Igor Popov, the Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group [brokering Karabakh settlement], told Azerbaijani media that depending on the outcome of the meeting the Minsk Group co-chairs plan to visit the region.

During the latest meetings with Ministers Mammadyarov and Nalbandyan on September 2-3, the Minsk Group co-chairs reiterated to both ministers that there is no alternative to a peaceful settlement of the long-standing dispute.

"The co-chairs will continue to maintain contacts with the sides to ease tensions and advance the peace process," they said.

The Minsk Group, established in 1992 and co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, has been working to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, which emerged in 1988 and boiled into a brutal war in the early 1990s. A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994. Peace talks have been largely fruitless so far.

Since the war, which claimed some 30,000 lives and displaced about a million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno Karabakh, defying UN resolutions.

OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier has expressed concern over the lack of progress in the conflict settlement.

"When it comes to Nagorno-Karabakh everyone is concerned about the absence of progress, and the deterioration of the situation on the ground, with 28 people killed only this year," Zannier said in an interview with Russian news agency Interfax on Tuesday.

"I personally share this concern. We continue to support the efforts of the Minsk Group and its co-chairs -- Russia, France and the U.S."

According to him, no international efforts can be effective if there is no political will on both sides to negotiate a peaceful solution.

"This is what I stressed during my recent meetings with the respective foreign ministers in New York. Returning to the substance of the negotiations and looking ahead are the only ways to prevent escalation and bring the long-awaited security to the region," Zannier added.