Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 28
Trend:
France’s Foreign MinisterJean-Marc Ayrault and his Armenian counterpart Edward Nalbandian discussed the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Paris, the press service of Armenian Foreign Ministry said in a message Oct. 28.
The sides noted the importance of implementing the agreements reached at the summits in Vienna and St. Petersburg, PanArmenian reported.
Earlier, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Igor Popov (Russia), James Warlick (the US), Pierre Andrieu (France) and Personal Representative of the OSCE chairperson-in-office, Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk visited the region Oct. 23-25 and made a statement on the visit’s results.
Following the meeting in St. Petersburg, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s President Serzh Sargsyan confirmed in a joint statement the agreements reached during the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Vienna.
These agreements are aimed at stabilizing the situation in the conflict zone and the creation of an atmosphere conducive to advancing the peace process.
Therefore, they agreed, in particular, to increase the number of international observers in the conflict zone, the Kremlin website reported earlier on the results of the meeting of the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian presidents in St. Petersburg on June 20.
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.