Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Igor Popov of Russia, Jacques Faure of France, and James Warlick of the U.S., will visit the region next week, Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry spokesman, Elman Abdullayev said on January 29.

He said the visit is aimed to continue the negotiations with the parties of the conflict on its settlement.

Earlier, the OSCE co-chairs travelled to the region on December 15-19 to discuss recent developments in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process.

Last week, the co-chairs mulled the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the Azerbaijani and Armenian Foreign Ministers.

The co-chairs expressed their deep concern over continued violence in the region and stressed that recent incidents undermine negotiations and diminish the prospects for peace.

Recently the situation on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops has escalated. In recent days the Armenian armed forces violated ceasefire over 1000 times.

The Ministry said on January 29 the ceasefire has been violated on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops in different positions 250 times a day.

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.

The UN Security Council's four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.