Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be settled by military means - French official

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh cannot be settled by military means, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Harlem Desir said on Monday the meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.


Desir reminded about France's position on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh as a co-chair of the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). "France is confident that this conflict cannot be settled by military means, and is interested in resuming negotiations aimed at peaceful settlement," he noted.


Sargsyan "shared his point of view on the reasons of the current situation on the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as possible ways to settle the conflict," the Armenian president's press service said.


Desir and Sargsyan agreed that "in the current situation, it is necessary to first of all implement mechanism of control over ceasefire violations as soon as possible, take measures on confidence building in order to prevent aggressive interferences and create conditions making it possible to find mutually acceptable approaches to resolving the problem at the negotiations table."


On Saturday, April 2, the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh rapidly deteriorated when the parties to the Karabakh conflict accused each other of violating truce along the front line. The claims came from defense authorities of Armenia and of Azerbaijan.


On April 5 Azerbaijan's Chief of Staff Col. Gen. Nadjmeddin Sadykov and his Armenian counterpart Col. Gen. Yury Khachaturov in Moscow with Russia's mediation. At the talks the sides reached an agreement on cessation of hostilities at the contact line between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces. On the same day, the defense ministries of the two countries announced that the ceasefire in Nagorno-Karabakh would start at 12am local time.Nagorno-Karabakh conflict


The highland region of Nagorno-Karabakh (Mountainous Karabakh) is a mostly Armenian-populated enclave inside the sovereign territory of Azerbaijan. It was the first zone of inter-ethnic tensions and violence to appear on the map of the former USSR.


Even almost a quarter of a century after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Karabakh remains a so-called 'frozen conflict' on the post-Soviet space, as the region is the subject of a dispute between Azerbaijan and the local Armenian population that draws on strong support from fellow-countrymen in neighboring Armenia.


In 1988, hostilities broke out there between the forces reporting to the government in Baku and Armenian residents, which resulted in the region's de facto independence. In 1994 a ceasefire was reached but the relations between Azerbaijan and Armenia remain strained ever since then.


Russia, France and the US co-chair the Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which attempts to broker an end to hostilities and the conflict. 

www.ann.az