Newly elected president of the Parliamentary Assembly of Council of Europe, a member of the Turkey’s ruling AKP party, Mevlut Cavusoglu said that the resolution of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict is important for Europe, Asbarez reported.
“This is a problem that still needs to be resolved. The OSCE Minsk Group co-chairing countries as well as Switzerland are committed to continuing the efforts toward resolving this conflict,” he said at a press briefing. He added that normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia would also contribute to the peace process, exclaiming that “PACE will do its utmost for peaceful resolution of the conflict.” Cavusoglu also said that military options and war are not solutions for “problems in our continent.”
For the first time, a Turkish parliamentarian has been elected PACE president.
Cavusoglu who is the chairman of the PACE Turkey delegation and a member of parliament from the Justice and Development (AK) party, replaced Spain’s Luis Maria de Puig as the president of the PACE for upcoming two years on Monday.
Turkey will assume the term presidency of the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers for six months as of November 2010.
The conflict between Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan broke out in 1988 as result of the ethnic cleansing the latter launched in the final years of the Soviet Union. The Karabakh War was fought from 1991 to 1994. Since the ceasefire in 1994, sealed by Armenia, Nagorno Karabakh and Azerbaijan, most of Nagorno Karabakh and several regions of Azerbaijan around it (the security zone) remain under the control of NKR defense army. Armenia and Azerbaijan are holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group up till now.
The OSCE Minsk Group was created in 1992 by the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)) to encourage a peaceful, negotiated resolution to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.
The Minsk Group is headed by a Co-Chairmanship consisting of France, Russia and the United States. Furthermore, the Minsk Group also includes the following participating States: Belarus, Germany, Italy, Portugal, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Turkey as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan. Current Co-chairmen of the Minsk Group are: Ambassador Bernard Fassier of France, Ambassador Yuri Merzlyakov of the Russian Federation and Ambassador Robert Bradtke of the United States.
The main objectives of the Minsk Process are as follows: Providing an appropriate framework for conflict resolution in the way of assuring the negotiation process supported by the Minsk Group; Obtaining conclusion by the Parties of an agreement on the cessation of the armed conflict in order to permit the convening of the Minsk Conference; Promoting the peace process by deploying OSCE multinational peacekeeping forces.
The Minsk Process can be considered to be successfully concluded if the objectives referred to above are fully met.
