The sides exchanged views on the settlement process of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and discussed possible ways out of the situation.
The OSCE chair embarked on a visit to the South Caucasus on June 29. He will arrive in Azerbaijan on June 30.
Steinmeier will leave Azerbaijan for Georgia on July 1.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.
A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.
The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.
Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.
Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.
Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.
OSCE chair meets with Karabakh separatists’ leader
30 June 2016
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OSCE Chairperson-in-Office, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as part of his visit to Armenia, met on Thursday with Bako Sahakyan, the leader of the separatist regime created in Azerbaijan’s occupied Nagorno-Karabakh region.
