Today's Zaman: Armenian, Azerbaijani leaders to meet in Moscow late January

PanARMENIAN.Net - Ankara hopes that recent diplomatic mobility in the South Caucasus will eventually lead to progress in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement process and "will enable Turkey to pass a so-called threshold to move ahead in ongoing efforts for the normalization of ties with estranged neighbor Armenia," Today's Zaman reported.



Moscow yesterday hosted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who urged President Dmitry Medvedev and his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, on maintenance of the "gained impetus" in efforts of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to resolve the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.



"During a visit to Ankara late last month, Azerbaijan's Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov voiced his country's approval of an updated version of the Madrid document on the resolution of the conflict," said a senior Turkish diplomat speaking on condition of anonymity. "Earlier this week, the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs presented the updated document to Armenian officials in Yerevan. However, the Armenian side hasn't yet made any statement concerning their views on the document. In late January Medvedev is expected to host Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan at a trilateral summit in Russia."



"Any joint declaration, either verbally or in written form, to be released after the meeting in Russia and which clearly shows that the Armenian and Azerbaijani sides have full consent over the updated version of the Madrid Principles will mark a milestone. It will give a freer hand to Turkey for maintaining faster progress through ongoing efforts for normalization in the South Caucasus," the diplomat said.



The Madrid document contains the proposals put forward by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs on the basic principles of a settlement. The document was presented to the Armenian and Azerbaijani representatives at the OSCE summit in the Spanish capital in November 2007.



The OSCE Minsk Group was created in 1992 by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)) to encourage a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.



The Helsinki Additional Meeting of the CSCE Council on 24 March 1992, requested the Chairman-in-Office to convene as soon as possible a conference on Nagorno Karabakh under the auspices of the CSCE to provide an ongoing forum for negotiations towards a peaceful settlement of the crisis on the basis of the principles, commitments and provisions of the CSCE. The Conference is to take place in Minsk. Although it has not to this date been possible to hold the conference, the so-called Minsk Group spearheads the OSCE effort to find a political solution to this conflict.



On 6 December 1994, the Budapest Summit decided to establish a co-chairmanship for the process.



Implementing the Budapest decision, the Chairman-in-Office issued on 23 March 1995, the mandate for the Co-Chairmen of the Minsk Process.



The main objectives of the Minsk Process are as follows: Providing an appropriate framework for conflict resolution in the way of assuring the negotiation process supported by the Minsk Group; Obtaining conclusion by the Parties of an agreement on the cessation of the armed conflict in order to permit the convening of the Minsk Conference; Promoting the peace process by deploying OSCE multinational peacekeeping forces.



The Minsk Process can be considered to be successfully concluded if the objectives referred to above are fully met.



The Minsk Group is headed by a Co-Chairmanship consisting of France, Russia and the United States. Furthermore, the Minsk Group also includes the following participating States: Belarus, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Turkey as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan. Current Co-chairmen of the Minsk Group are: Ambassador Bernard Fassier of France, Ambassador Yuri Merzlyakov of the Russian Federation and Ambassador Robert Bradtke of the United States.



The Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) is a de facto independent republic located in the South Caucasus, bordering by Azerbaijan to the north and east, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the west.



After the Soviet Union established control over the area, in 1923 it formed the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan launched an ethnic cleansing which resulted in the Karabakh War that was fought from 1991 to 1994.



Since the ceasefire in 1994, most of Nagorno Karabakh and several regions of Azerbaijan around it (the security zone) remain under the control of Nagorno Karabakh defense army.