While Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev declared on 12 April that the OSCE Minsk Group’s mandate is effectively void, the United States and France affirmed that they remain committed to continuing work within the framework of the same group toward a resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Paris and Washington were responding to a statement made a few days earlier by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to which France and the United States, having severed all ties with Russia, had also erased the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group, declaring that they did not wish to communicate with Russia in that format.
Aliyev noted that the Minsk Group had operated for 28 years, during which the co-chairs had presumably made hundreds of visits to Armenia and Azerbaijan, yet the result had been zero. “Azerbaijan resolved the Karabakh conflict on its own, through military-political means. In effect, the mandate given to the Minsk Group to resolve the conflict is probably legally valid, but in reality it is void,” stressed the Azerbaijani president.
The French Foreign Ministry, responding to the question of what its position is regarding the future of the Minsk Group, reaffirmed its full commitment to the establishment of peace and stability in the South Caucasus region, both bilaterally and as president of the Council of the European Union and co-chair of the Minsk Group.
“In that capacity, France continues to work with Armenia and Azerbaijan so that progress can be recorded on humanitarian issues, and continues to support the work of border delimitation, the process of eliminating the region’s isolation, the preservation of heritage, the signing of a peace treaty between the two countries and the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. To that end, on 4 February, at the initiative of the President of the Republic, a meeting was organised in video format with the Prime Minister of Armenia, the President of Azerbaijan and the President of the European Council. The French co-chair of the Minsk Group is currently on a working visit to Yerevan these days,” the ministry stated.
On the other hand, the United States Embassy in Armenia, responding to Lavrov’s recent statement about the format of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmanship, confirmed that the United States is ready to engage in peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, bilaterally and with like-minded partners, including as co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, with the aim of helping those countries on the issue of a lasting and comprehensive peace.
“The United States continues to remain committed to building a peaceful, democratic and prosperous future in the South Caucasus. As the Secretary of State noted during the telephone conversation with the leaders of the two countries on 5 April, we continue to encourage the continuation of peace negotiations between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” the embassy stated.
