Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry urged the OSCE Minsk Group co-chair to be careful in statements regarding the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"Conducting the mediation mission to settle the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is also a responsibility of the U.S. along with Russia and France," Foreign Ministry spokesman Elman Abdullayev wrote on his Facebook page on March 24.

"The responsibility of the co-chairing countries, which conduct mediation efforts in the talks between Baku and Yerevan to resolve the Armenian- Azerbaijani conflict, is to restore justice. The restoration of justice means forcing Armenia to comply with norms and principles of international law, towards which this country continues to show disrespect," Abdullayev wrote.

He made the remarks commenting on the OSCE Minsk Group U.S. co-chair, James Warlick's statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Warlick earlier wrote on his Twitter page that the conflict exists between Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, while there is no a state entitled Nagorno-Karabakh and the conflict is between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Abdullayev said while making statements on the conflict's settlement, Warlick has to be careful, because the matter here rests on the violation of international law and humanitarian catastrophe that Azerbaijani people faced.

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.

As a result of the military aggression of Armenia, over 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed, 4,866 are reported missing and almost 100,000 were injured, and 50,000 were disabled.

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 and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.