Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said hosting a delegation headed by EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Philippe Lefort in Baku on Thursday that if Armenia accepts the proposals of the mediating OSCE Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it must agree to sign a comprehensive peace agreement, the Foreign Ministry said Thursday.

Mammadyarov also informed Lefort that if Khojaly airport is commissioned in the Armenia-occupied territories of Azerbaijan, it would be a serious blow to the peace process.

He said the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs -- a team of international mediators from the U.S., Russia and France -- support this stance.

Mammadyarov said the main problem in the settlement of the conflict is the presence of the armed forces of Armenia in the occupied territories.

Lefort, for his part, stressed the importance of contacts between the two communities [Azerbaijani and Armenian communities of Nagorno-Karabakh] for reaching peace.

The same day Lefort said at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy that maintaining the status quo in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is unacceptable, Trend news agency reported.

"The population needs to be prepared for peace, not war," he said.

Lefort said further that preventing wars is one of the EU's main priorities. "War brings dire consequences to any region," he noted.

"The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has brought bad consequences for both countries," he said. "Each side must demonstrate the will to resolve the conflict through negotiations and achieve lasting peace."

Lefort said that the long-standing conflict must be resolved while ensuring the territorial integrity of countries and rights of all people.

"The EU has urged the sides to implement all agreements and commitments in the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group," he said. "The EU is ready to provide support for the OSCE Minsk Group's activity."

Earlier this week, President Ilham Aliyev received the EU special representative. Along with issues related to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, the talks focused on prospects for development of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the European Union.

Besides, Lefort on Wednesday met with the chairman of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh Bayram Safarov and the head of its Coordination Council Orkhan Akbarov.

Lefort said that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is a very important issue for the EU, which recognizes the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and the inviolability of the territorial integrity of other countries.

The EU representative also noted the importance of dialogue between the communities to accelerate resolution of the conflict.

Safarov spoke about the history of the Karabakh conflict and its impact on Azerbaijan and the region as a whole.

He emphasized that international organizations have been involved in resolving the problem for 20 years but in most cases they allow the use of double standards and do not take a firm stand on the issue.

In turn, Coordination Council head Akbarov noted the EU's role in settling the conflict, stressing the importance of further involvement of the EU in the conflict resolution.

Akbarov also said that in order to settle the conflict it is necessary to organize dialogue between the communities with the support and assistance of the EU.

The Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor. Since a brutal war in the early 1990s, Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan's territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions. A fragile ceasefire has been in place since 1994, but the Minsk Group-brokered peace talks have been mostly fruitless so far.

Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.