Azerbaijan, Baku, August 5 / Trend E. Ostapenko /
Azerbaijani and Turkish Diaspora organizations in the USA addressed to the U.S. President Barack Obama with a letter, the letter received from the Azerbaijani-U.S Council said. The letter says that last year's war between Georgia and Russia punctuated the continued threat to peace and security in the South Caucasus arising from unresolved territorial conflicts that have spanned more than two decades since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Recently, several Iranian officials openly threatened Azerbaijan for hosting Israeli President Shimon Peres in Baku, the letter said.
Moreover, four UN Security Council resolutions demanding that Armenian forces withdraw and cease the occupation of Azerbaijani lands since 1993 have achieved little for the displaced one million refugees. All of this adds to the urgency of reaching a sustainable peace based on the fundamentals of international law and human rights, or, as you have stated earlier, "a lasting and durable settlement of the Nagorno-Karabagh conflict," the letter said.
The South Caucasus, a strategic global juncture, holds great promise for regional and global peace and prosperity. Yet the region's potential has been disrupted and disable by two decades of conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Armenia's own development has been paralyzed as a result of its self-imposed isolation from major regional projects. More than one million Armenians have left Armenia due to poor government, poor economics, and poor services. While the Azerbaijani residents of the Nagorno-Karabakh region and other Armenian-occupied regions of Azerbaijan have suffered ethnic cleansing, displacement, and destruction of personal and cultural property, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh continue to live in economic and political uncertainty.
Armenia's occupation of Azerbaijan has been costly in many ways.
A lasting and durable peace settlement would bring about a major positive change to the South Caucasus. The Azerbaijani-Georgian partnership has already shown what can be reached when the parties work towards regional cooperation, the letter said. Should the Armenian leadership demonstrate productive pragmatism, it can help integrate the nation with the economic and democratic future of the region securing a peace and prosperity for its people.
Such a future would include open communications and borders, including the Turkish-Armenian border, which was closed in response to Armenia's invasion and occupation of the Azerbaijani region of Kelbajar, outside of Nagorno-Karabakh region, in 1993, the letter said.
A lasting and durable peace would advance U.S. interests as it provides for lasting stability in a strategically important region where the United States requires solid friends. Significantly, as the value of the Caspian hydrocarbon resources increase for Europe's energy security and the South Caucasus transport corridor serves as the key conduit for access to Afghanistan, a lasting and durable peace in this region becomes an even higher priority.
Therefore, on behalf of the Azerbaijani-American and Turkish-American communities, we support and encourage your Good Office to intensify U.S. efforts towards reaching a just peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan based on United Nations Security Council resolutions and the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, and to seize this historic opportunity.
While we recognize the significant pressures that bear from special interests opposed to peace for a variety of reasons, including nationalist and religious ones, who have previously succeeded to undermine peace efforts, we hope that America's vision for the South Caucasus is informed by its national interests and its relationship with strategic partners in the region, the letter said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan lost all of Nagorno-Karabakh except for Shusha and Khojali in December 1991. In 1992-93, Armenian armed forces occupied Shusha, Khojali and 7 districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, France, and the U.S. - are currently holding the peace negotiations.