54 Congressmen call on Obama to press Aliyev on Karabakh peace

54 Congressmen call on Obama to press Aliyev on Karabakh peace

PanARMENIAN.Net - In the days leading up to Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev’s visit to Washington for an international nuclear summit this week, more than 50 U.S. Representatives have joined with leaders of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in calling upon U.S. President Barack Obama to leverage this visit to pressure the Azerbaijan leader to stop obstructing the implementation of the life-saving Royce-Engel peace proposals for Nagorno Karabakh, reported the Armenian National Committee of America.

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 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 these concrete, common-sense peace-keeping measures.

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