OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs will visit the region on June 10, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told a briefing on Thursday, an APA correspondent reported from Moscow.

She said the co-chairs will visit Armenia on June 10 to meet with President Serzh Sargsyan and Defense Minister Vigen Sargsyan.

“The sides will discuss the situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone,” she said.

Zakharova noted that the co-chairs are also expected to visit Nagorno-Karabakh.

“A week after their visit to Armenia and Karabakh, the co-chairs will make a visit to Baku. At the end of the visit, the co-chairs will issue a joint statement,” she added.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict entered its modern phase when the Armenian SRR made territorial claims against the Azerbaijani SSR in 1988.

A fierce war broke out between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. As a result of the war, Armenian armed forces occupied some 20 percent of Azerbaijani territory which includes Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent districts (Lachin, Kalbajar, Aghdam, Fuzuli, Jabrayil, Gubadli and Zangilan), and over a million Azerbaijanis became refugees and internally displaced people.

The military operations finally came to an end when Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in Bishkek in 1994.

Dealing with the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is the OSCE Minsk Group, which was created after the meeting of the CSCE (OSCE after the Budapest summit held in December 1994) Ministerial Council in Helsinki on 24 March 1992. The Group’s members include Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belarus, Finland and Sweden.

Besides, the OSCE Minsk Group has a co-chairmanship institution, comprised of Russian, the US and French co-chairs, which began operating in 1996.

Resolutions 822, 853, 874 and 884 of the UN Security Council, which were passed in short intervals in 1993, and other resolutions adopted by the UN General Assembly, PACE, OSCE, OIC, and other organizations require Armenia to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Apa.az