Armenia, Azerbaijan Foreign Ministers to Meet in Hamburg on Dec. 8-9

The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan will meet in northern Germany on December 8-9, the co-chair of Europe's Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement group said Thursday.

BAKU (Sputnik) — The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group, co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States, has been attempting to resolve the conflict since 1992.

The meeting among Armenian and Azerbaijani diplomats would take place as part of of the 23rd OSCE Ministerial Council in Hamburg, OSCE Minsk Group co-chair Ambassador James Warlick said as quoted by the Azeri Press Agency.

Azerbaijan's Armenian-dominated breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed its independence in 1991. After the military conflict ended in 1994, Azerbaijan lost control over the region. Violence erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh on April 2, 2016 and led to multiple casualties. The parties to the conflict signed a Russian-brokered ceasefire on April 5, but mutual accusations have not stopped so far.

On May 16, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev met in Vienna to discuss the conflict. The sides reiterated there could be no military solution to the conflict and reaffirmed their commitment to 1994 and 1995 peace agreements. The presidents also agreed to finalize the OSCE investigative mechanism as soon as possible to reduce the risk of further violence.

On June 20, the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia met in St. Petersburg where they reaffirmed their commitment to achieve steady progress in political settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and agreed to increase the number of OSCE monitors working in the conflict zone.