OSCE co-chairs hopeful for presidential meeting by year end

The OSCE Minsk Group, engaged in peace talks over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, hopes for a meeting of the Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents by the end of 2015.

"The OSCE Minsk Group co-chair hopes the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet later this year,” Minsk Group Co-Chair from U.S. James Warlick said in Yerevan, Armenian media reported.

OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs Igor Popov (Russia), James Warlick (U.S.), Pierre Andrieu (France), as well as Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrzej Kasprzyk visited Armenia to discuss the settlement process of the ongoing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Afterwards, the co-chairs will visit Baku to exchange views with Azerbaijani leadership on means of a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

“One of the reasons that we are bringing the presidents together, and we hope that they will meet later this year, is that we can have a process that leads to negotiated settlement,” the diplomat said.

The latest meeting between Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan took place in Paris, France last October through the French president's initiative.

Earlier, the co-chairs discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement and organization of presidential meeting in Washington and Moscow.

Warlick further noted that the co-chairs are discussing the principles and elements of the settlement, but they had not “got into the level of detail when sitting down with maps.”

“The presidents are talking about principles and elements that will make up the settlement, and I hope we can get to the point of sitting at the negotiation table and working through many of these issues systematically,” he added.

Warlick further expressed belief that the deployment of peacekeeping forces is one of the elements of a comprehensive settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

“There also must be true, sound security guarantees as a part of any settlement. And that will mean international peacekeeping force,” he said.

He added that the parties and mediators had not got to the point of working through all the details, but they all need to be worked out to the satisfaction of all people of the region.

Warlick earlier mentioned the issue of deploying peacekeeping forces in his recent interview with Russia's Vedomosti newspaper.

He also told the newspaper that “occupied lands must be returned under Azerbaijan's control within the framework of complex regulation.”

This statement has dropped two Armenian myths and confirmed the true position: First, the lands surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh are not “freed” or “disputed,” they are “occupied” territories. Secondly, the invader is not the mythic “Karabakh Armenian forces,” it is Armenia itself.

Armenia captured Nagorno-Karabakh and seven surrounding regions from Azerbaijan in a war that followed the Soviet breakup in 1991. More than 20,000 Azerbaijanis were killed and nearly 1 million were displaced as a result of the war.

Large-scale hostilities ended with a Russia-brokered ceasefire in 1994 but Armenia continued the occupation in defiance of four UN Security Council resolutions calling for immediate and unconditional withdrawal.

Peace talks mediated by Russia, France, and the U.S. have produced no results so far.

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