Nagorno Karabakh conflict remains the biggest threat to the security of the region, US Assistant Ambassador to Azerbaijan says

• Friday, October 19, 11:43

The Nagorno Karabakh conflict remains the biggest threat to the security of the region, US Assistant Ambassador to Azerbaijan Adam Sterling says, Trend reports.

Sterling delivered a speech at the international conference on the role of cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States in ensuring peace and security in the region.

He said the United States will continue efforts for Azerbaijan and Armenia to come to peaceful settlement of the conflict. "Washington's position is changeless. The United States supports peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. We will continue efforts for the peaceful settlement of the problem", Sterling said.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict broke out on February 28 1988 in the Azerbaijani Sumgait with massacre of Armenians as a peculiar response of Azerbaijanis to the peaceful demand of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous Region, part of the Azerbaijani SSR, to unite with the Armenian SSR. This resulted in other pogroms of Armenians in Baku, Kirovabad and other regions of Azerbaijan populated with Armenians.  In 1991  Azerbaijan unleashed war against peaceful populations of Nagorno-Karabakh, expulsing ethnic Armenians from the territory of Azerbaijan. Dozens of thousands of peaceful residents on both parties
were killed in the military actions, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless and have become refugees. In 1994 in Bishkek in mediation of the OSCE MG, the NKR, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Protocol on Ceasefire that is observed more or less so far. Since 1992 the OSCE Minsk Group represented by co- chairs from Russia, U.S.  and France has been mediating in resolution of the conflict unleashed by Azerbaijan in 1988. At present the peace process is based on the Madrid Principles suggested by the OSCE MG in 2007 in Madrid and renovated in 2009.