Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijan's foreign minister and U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group discussed the ways of settling Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Elmar Mammadyarov met with co-chair James Warlick on September 23 on the sidelines of the 69th session of the UN General Assembly, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry reported.

Mammadyarov leads the Azerbaijani delegation visiting New York to take part in the UN General Assembly session.

The minister reiterated Azerbaijan's position on settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He stressed that first and foremost, Armenian armed forces must be withdrawn from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan for the resolution of the conflict.

Prior to the meeting with the Azerbaijani side, Warlick wrote on his Twitter page that Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers will meet with the Minsk Group co-chairs to mull Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged in 1988 over Armenia's 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.