Nagorno-Karabakh conflict solution to be mulled at European parliament
By Sara Rajabova
The European Parliament will discuss the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh region said.
Chairman of the coordinating council of the community Orkhan Akbarov left on March 27 for Brussels to join the roundtable on "Future of the South Caucasus: the impact of economic initiatives for the peaceful process in the Nagorno- Karabakh conflict".
Akbarov will deliver speech at the organized event.
Along with this event, several meetings on the communities' activity in the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be held as part of the visit to Brussels.
The event was organized by the European Geopolitical Forum.
European Parliament in 2013 adopted a resolution which confirmed that Armenian troops have occupied Azerbaijani territories and urged to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions and the L'Aquila statement of the mediating countries' leaders in 2009.
According to changes to the resolution, the European Parliament recalled its position that the occupation of territory of an Eastern Partnership member by another member state violates the fundamental principles and objectives of the EU program.
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 and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.