OSCE Ready to Convene Special Karabakh Session in Case of Escalation

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is ready to gather a special session on Nagorno-Karabakh if necessary, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said Friday.

GENEVA (Sputnik) – The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is ready to convene a special session on Nagorno-Karabakh if the situation deteriorates in the region, OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier said Friday.

He said a weekly ambassadorial-level OSCE Permanent Council meeting addressed the latest escalation and subsequent ceasefire violations in the breakaway Armenian-dominated Azerbaijani region. The OSCE Minsk Group, co-chaired by Russia, the United States and France, has been mediating the conflict settlement since 1992.

"Maybe the next time the co-chairs come, we will have a special [meeting]. Of course, if developments there take a bad turn, then we will need another special meeting. But otherwise we didn’t plan anything before the return of co-chairs," Zannier told RIA Novosti.

The OSCE chief stressed that the Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group, Russia's Igor Popov, US mediator James Warlick and Pierre Andrieu of France, planned to stay in the region "for as long as it’s required to see the next steps and to see what happens."

"Then they will go to Berlin, and then it’s really up to them to see when they are ready to come to Vienna," Zannier said, adding that he expected the group’s report in "a matter of weeks."

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict began in 1988, when the autonomous region sought to secede from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. The region proclaimed independence when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.