Azerbaijan, Baku, 22 October/ Trend , corr I. Alizade/ Germany hopes that newly-elected Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia Ilham Aliyev and Serj Sarkisyan will continue talks on the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the conflict will be solved soon.
"The August events in Georgia showed that no conflict including those in the South Caucasus can be solved by war and force," Steffen Rayse, head of working group for the Germany-South Caucasus inter-parliamentary cooperation said to journalists in Baku.
The conflict between the two countries of the South Caucasus began in 1988 due to Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan lost the Nagorno-Karabakh, except of Shusha and Khojali, in December 1991. In 1992-93, Armenian Armed Forces occupied Shusha, Khojali and Nagorno-Karabakh's seven surrounding regions. 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, but fruitless negotiations.
The delegation of the fraction of the Social Democratic Party of Bundestag of Germany arrived in Azerbaijan on 22 October.
Uta Tsapf and Steffen Rayse's visit aims at to expand inter-parliamentary ties between Azerbaijan and Armenia. " Germany support resolution of "frozen conflicts" in the South Caucasus under territorial integrity and by peaceful means. Germany and Social Democratic Party that I am representing recognizes Azerbaijan's territorial integrity. Germany has always stood by Azerbaijan and will always do so. Europe supports Azerbaijan more in comparison with US and Russia," head of the working group said.
Rayse said they visited Azerbaijan at the request of the Foreign Minister of Germany Frank-Walter Steinmeier. "Foreign Minister asked us to get familiar with the situation in Azerbaijan after presidential election and continuation of peace talks on the resolution of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict," he said.
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