Araz News: The OSCE Minsk Group is working on organizing a meeting between Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents.

James Warlick, Minsk Group’s U.S. co-chair, has said mediating a new meeting between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan is the main point in the OSCE Minsk Group’s call.

“We have agreed to intensify the dialogue between the parties,” Warlick said in an interview with local media.

The latest meeting between President Ilham Aliyev and President Serzh Sargsyan took place in Paris, France back in October of last year through the French president’s initiative.

Warlick expressed hope that the next meeting between the two presidents occurs this year.

He also voiced disagreement with opinion that the negotiations have reached a deadlock.

“Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan do not want war. Though there was an opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in the negotiations that took place until now, it has not been used effectively,” Warlick said.

He noted that now there is a new opportunity for this, and it needs to be utilized effectively.

The Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents periodically meet to discuss the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on the margins of negotiations. However, the talks have so far failed to produce any genuine results, given the Armenian side’s inclination to remain belligerent rather than engage in peace-making.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since then,a lengthy war in the early 1990s displaced over one million Azerbaijanis and led Armenian armed forces to occupy over 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway based on a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.

The UN Security Council’s four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Reprinted from azernews