Azerbaijan, Baku / corr Trend E.Huseynli / Nizami Bahmanov, the head of the Azerbaijani community of Nagono-Karabakh, considers that the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs should cease the peace talks. "If the co-chairs cannot achieve any result in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, it is necessary to cease talks and declare for the OSCE chairman that the Armenian side is unwilling to change its non-constructive position," Nizami Bahmanov, the head of the Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh said.
To resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict the Minsk Group was established in 1992 with the participation of 10 countries. Since 1997 three countries - the United States, Russia and France have been co-chairing at the OSCE Minsk Group. In this period the co-chairs have repeatedly came out with different proposals, whilst every time Armenia demonstrated non-constructive position.
Bahmanov said that as soon as the OSCE Minsk Group cease talks, the Nagorno-Karabakh talks should be resolved on the level of UN. It is so naive to expect results from the next visit of the Minsk Group co-chairs to the region scheduled for mid-January. "Still the co-chairs are unable to distinguish the occupant country from the country exposed to occupation and carry out imbalanced policy in the resolution of the problem. So, it is impossible to speak about any results," Bahmanov said.
The conflict between the two countries of the South Caucasus began in 1988 due to Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since 1992, Armenian Armed Forces have occupied 20% of Azerbaijan including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its seven surrounding districts. In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement at which time the active hostilities ended. The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group ( Russia, France, and the US) are currently holding peaceful negotiations.