Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

The European Union welcomed the recent meeting between the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents in Vienna.

Charge d'affaires of the EU delegation to Azerbaijan Toralf Pilz made the remark on November 20.

Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsian in Vienna on November 19.

The Foreign Ministers of the two countries and the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov of Russia, Jacques Faure of France, and James Warlick of the United States, and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson in Office also participated at the meeting.

The Minsk Group mediators said in a statement following the talks that during their private one-on-one meeting and the working session afterward with the co-chairs and the Ministers, the Presidents discussed a broad range of issues related to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan's internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

Long-standing efforts by US, Russian and French mediators have been largely fruitless so far.

The UN Security Council has passed four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal from the Azerbaijani territory, but they have not been enforced to this day.