Baku, Azerbaijan, Apr. 6
By Elmira Tariverdiyeva – Trend:
France, as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, worked actively with its Russian and American partners to end the escalation on the line of contact of the Azerbaijani and Armenian troops in April 2016 and resume negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement posted on its website Apr. 6.
France reiterates its conviction that the current status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh is untenable and that there can be no military solution to the conflict, says the statement.
“France calls on the parties to abide by the commitments taken at the Vienna summit on May 16, 2016, and the Saint Petersburg summit on June 20, 2016: to respect the ceasefire, establish trust-building measures, and resume negotiations,” says the French Foreign Ministry’s statement.
As President Francois Hollande noted at recent meetings in Paris with his Azerbaijani and Armenian counterparts, France remains fully committed to achieving the conflict’s negotiated, lasting solution that promotes stability and prosperity throughout the region, said the Foreign Ministry.
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 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 after the meeting of the Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian presidents in St. Petersburg on June 20, 2016.
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 Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.