Azerbaijan, Armenia presidential meeting highlights need to peace agreement
By Sara Rajabova
Azerbaijan's top official said the recent meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents highlighted the need to a peace agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
"The importance of signing a peace agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was emphasized during the recent meeting of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan," Foreign Minister ElmarMammadyarov said at a briefing in Baku on September 8.
President Aliyev, President Sargsyan and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Wales on September 4.
During the meeting, John Kerry was briefed on the negotiation process and the possibility of taking new steps, Mammadyarov said.
He further noted that Azerbaijan's position is simple; it is calling on the withdrawal of Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijan's territories as the current situation is unacceptable for the country.
Mammadyarov also added that he would meet with his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian during the session of the UN General Assembly in New York in late September.
"The U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, James Warlick, will visit the region by late 2014 to arrange the meeting," Mammadyarov said.
For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in the conflict which emerged over Armenia's territorial claims against its South Caucasus neighbor.
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 calling on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.