Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

The Azerbaijani Defense Minister has discussed the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with the Organization for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) in Europe representative.

Azerbaijani Defense Minister, Colonel-General Zakir Hasanov received the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Special Representative Andrzej Kasprzyk on August 15, the Defense Ministry said.

During the meeting, the parties exchanged views on the situation on the contact line of Azerbaijani and Armenian troops, and the results of a recent monitoring operation of the ceasefire.

The last monitoring operation of the OSCE was carried out on August 1. During the operation OSCE detected no incident on the contact line.

Recently, U.S. Co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick said the mediators will visit the region once again in the near future.

Warlick said the co-chairs intend to travel to the region in the near future, although no date is set yet.

The Minsk Group mediators last time visited the region in late May-beginning of June and discussed ways of resolving Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which erupted back in 1988 over Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

Since a 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 long-standing efforts by U.S., Russian and French mediators have been largely 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.