Azernews.Az

OSCE mediators brokering settlement to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh started their visit to the region on Thursday, PanARMENIAN.Net website reported.

The Minsk Group co-chairs -- Jacques Faure of France, Robert Bradtke of the United States and Igor Popov of Russia -- and the Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-office Andrzej Kasprzyk visited the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region, where they met with separatist authorities of the region.

The Minsk Group co-chairs will discuss during the visit their ideas how to reach progress in the resolution of the long-lasting conflict and make the peace process move forward, Trend news agency quoted US Ambassador to Azerbaijan Richard Morningstar as saying earlier.

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.

The Minsk Group co-chairs presented annual reports ahead of their visit to the region. The co-chairs outlined their activities over the last year during individual and joint meetings with the sides and trips to the region, as well as bilateral engagement by each of the co-chair countries and a trilateral meeting of the Russian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani presidents in the Russian city of Sochi in January.

They discussed their role in preventing tension on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops and avoiding escalation when violence has occurred, in particular through the work of Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk, and his team in the region.