Azerbaijan, Baku, 2April / corr Trend A.Gasimova / Adopted in Nov together with the co-chairmen of OSCE Minsk Group, the document on base principles on Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement will serve as a good basis for the continuation of negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia, said Sergey Lavrov, the Foreign Minister of Russia, while making a speech in State Duma of Russia on 2 April.
At the end of November, co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group submitted to the Foreign Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan a document containing base principles on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries appeared in 1988 due to Armenian territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenia has occupied 20% of the Azerbaijani lands including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and its seven neighboring districts. Since 1992 to the present time, these territories have been under Armenian occupation. In 1994, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a cease-fire agreement at which time the active hostilities ended. The Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group ( Russia, France and USA) are holding peaceful negotiations.
Azerbaijan recently appealed to the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna to know about the procedures of appointing and recalling the co-chairmen of OSCE Minsk Group. The local media sources reported that it is caused because of the dissatisfaction of Azerbaijani Government with the issue that the co-chairman countries (the USA, France and Russia) voted against the adoption of the Resolution on 'the Situation in Occupied Territories of Azerbaijan' during the session of the UN General Assembly on 14 March.
