Congressmen urge Obama to press Azerbaijan on Karabakh peace

PanARMENIAN.Net - In anticipation of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's visit to Washington for a Nuclear Summit at the end of March, leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee are calling upon U.S. President Barack Obama to use this opportunity to personally press the Azerbaijan leader to stop obstructing the implementation of the life-saving Royce-Engel peace proposals for Nagorno Karabakh.

The letter, authored by Chairman Ed Royce and Representative Brad Sherman, a senior member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, builds upon an earlier Congressional letter, sent by 85 U.S. Representatives to the State Department last December, in support of three practical peacekeeping measures, known collectively as the Royce-Engel proposals:

an agreement from all sides not to deploy snipers, heavy arms, or new weaponry along the line of contact;

the placement of OSCE-monitored, advanced gunfire-locator systems and sound-ranging equipment to determine the source of attacks along the line of contact;

the deployment of additional OSCE observers along the line of contact to better monitor cease-fire violations.

In response to this earlier letter, the Obama Administration voiced support for the Royce-Engel proposals, specifically commenting that: “...the urgency of implementing such measures has never been greater." Despite this rhetorical support from the Obama Administration - and the longtime backing for these measures by the OSCE Minsk Group, Armenia, and Nagorno Karabakh - their implementation has, to date, been blocked by the Azerbaijani government. The authors of the Royce-Sherman letter seek to overcome this impasse by encouraging President Obama to work on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit with all the key stakeholders in a Nagorno Karabakh settlement to implement the concrete, common-sense peace-keeping measures that have been proposed by Members of Congress and previously supported by his Administration.

"We join with Chairman Ed Royce and Congressman Brad Sherman in calling upon President Obama not to miss this unique opportunity to call out Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev's obstruction of the life-saving Royce-Engel peace proposals for Nagorno Karabakh," said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian.