OSCE chief to visit Armenia, Azerbaijan over Karabakh conflict

PanARMENIAN.Net - OSCE Chairman-in-Office, German Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier will visit the South Caucasus region to wrestle the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, the OCSE said in a statement.

Steinmeier on Thursday, June 23 met with Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group, Ambassadors Igor Popov (Russian Federation) and Pierre Andrieu (France), and with Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk, the Personal Representative of the Chairperson-in-Office on the conflict dealt with by the OSCE Minsk Conference in Berlin.

The Co-chairs informed the Chairperson-in-Office about the results of the summit of the Presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia held in St. Petersburg on 20 June and the agreement reached there about increasing the number of staff of the Office of the Personal Representative in order to bring additional international observers into the conflict zone. The aim of the agreed increase is to stabilize the situation in the conflict zone and to create an atmosphere conducive to fostering the peace process, OSCE said.

Steinmeier welcomed the recent improvements in the upholding of the ceasefire. There was agreement among the participants of the Berlin meeting that a sustainable ceasefire and a return to political negotiations remain indispensable.

The talks also served the goal of co-ordinating possible further steps towards achieving a settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, also with a view to Steinmeier’s upcoming visit to the region.

In the framework of the German OSCE Chairmanship, Germany is supporting the negotiation efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group and its Co-chairs and will continue to work actively towards a settlement of the conflict.