Baku, Azerbaijan, May 19
By Anakhanum Idayatova - Trend:
The meeting held in Vienna on May 16 on settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is very important, Levente Kozma, the former Hungarian senior foreign policy advisor, told Trend May 19.
Status quo should be changed, because it won't cease the conflict, it will just postpone an eventual clash again in the future, he added.
Kozma noted that a second meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents should be held in the near future.
The EU, Russia and the US should take an active role in paving the road to a durable peace in the region, based on mutual understanding, non-violence and respect for the UN resolutions, he added.
A meeting was held in Vienna on May 16 involving President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan, US Secretary of State John Kerry, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, French Minister of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir, OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, and special representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office Andrzej Kasprzyk.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
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