Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has discussed the settlement of the long-lasting Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs.

President Aliyev received co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Igor Popov (Russia), Pierre Andrieu (France), Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk and David Salvo (the assistant co-chair from the U.S.) on October 15.

The sides mulled the issues related to the current state and prospects of negotiations to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which emerged in 1988 over Armenia's territorial claims against Azerbaijan.

Following the Baku visit, co-chairs will travel to Armenia.

During the OSCE monitoring on October 16, OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Personal Representative Andrzej Kasprzyk and OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Igor Popov (Russia), Pierre Andre (France), James Warlick (US), as well as Warlick's assistant David Salvo and Igor Popov's assistant Elena Kravchenko are expected to cross to the opposite side of the contact line from the territories controlled by Azerbaijani armed forces.

For over two decades, Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in 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 on its pullout from the neighboring country's territories.