Azerbaijan, Baku, May 26 / Trend /
The European Union has a great potential for mediation in the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, former EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus Peter Semneby said, News-Armenia reported on Saturday.
"When I was EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus, I stood for the EU to take a more active role in resolving the conflicts," Semneby said during the international conference "Caucasus -2011 "organized by the Caucasus Institute. "There is a great potential to seriously deal with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict."
He said that the EU's mediation must be implemented to support the OSCE Minsk Group, rather than to compete with it.
Semneby stressed that the relative calm in the conflict zone does not guarantee a similar situation in the future.
"The fact that it is more or less quiet in the conflict zone now does not mean that it will be so over the next decade," he said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 per cent of Azerbaijan since 1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, France and the U.S. - are currently holding peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding regions.