• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Karabakh settlement to be discussed at OSCE ministerial meeting

RIA Novosti

07:49 17/07/2010

YEREVAN, July 17 (RIA Novosti) - The settlement of the Nagorny Karabakh conflict is to be discussed Saturday at an informal meeting of OSCE foreign ministers in the Kazakh city of Almaty.

A long-standing dispute over Nagorny Karabakh, a breakaway region inside Azerbaijan with a predominantly ethnic Armenian population, has been a sticking point in relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The conflict first erupted in 1988, when the region claimed independence from Azerbaijan to join Armenia. The OSCE Minsk Group, comprising the United States, Russia and France, mediates the conflict.

A fragile ceasefire has been in place in the region since a brutal war between the two countries over the disputed enclave in early 1990s, which claimed more than 30,000 lives on both sides. Karabakh has since remained under Armenian control.

The Armenian, Azerbaijani, Russian and French foreign ministers - Edward Nalbandian, Elmar Mamedyarov, Sergei Lavrov, Bernard Kouchner - as well as U.S. State Secretary Hillary Clinton are expected to attend Saturday's meeting.

On July 14, Nalbandian told reporters in Yerevan that the Minsk Group co-chairmen are trying to organize the meeting but that it has not been fully agreed.

Nalbandian said the meeting should make clear whether Azerbaijan is ready to continue talks on the basis of the latest variant of the Madrid principles, presented in St. Petersburg a month ago.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev initiated a meeting on the Karabakh settlement between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders that took place in St. Petersburg on June 18. The presidents agreed to continue talks in line with the Madrid principles.

The OSCE Madrid principles, adopted in November 2007, envisage a stage-by-stage resolution of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict that should start with the gradual liberation of parts of Azerbaijan bordering Karabakh that were partly or fully occupied by Karabakh Armenian forces during the 1991-94 war.

In return, Karabakh should retain a corridor to Armenia and be able to determine its final status in a future referendum.

In January, Armenia and Azerbaijan agreed a preamble to an agreement on Nagorny Karabakh, revising and updating the Madrid principles. However, Azerbaijan later renewed threats of military action to retake the disputed region over a lack of progress at talks with Armenia.

Baku has fiercely opposed any decision on Karabakh that could be interpreted as giving the region independence from Azerbaijan.

In May, the region elected a 33-seat parliament with a voter turnout of almost 68%. Azerbaijani officials called the elections "illegal," saying they could seriously harm peace efforts.

The informal OSCE ministerial meeting, to be held at a resort 35 km from Almaty, will be attended by foreign ministers and high-ranking officials from the 56 member states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 12 partner states and a number of international organizations.

Kazakhstan is the OSCE's chairman in 2010. It strives to hold a formal summit of the OSCE heads of state this year in its capital Astana.