The 71st session of the UN General Assembly will be held from Sept. 13 to 26 in New York.

“The co-chairs remain actively engaged with the sides and plan to meet with the foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia at the UN General Assembly in New York later this month,” the US co-chair said.

Warlick said they hope to with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and others next week in Moscow.

“We look forward to discussing the implementation of agreements reached between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia at recent summit meetings in Vienna and St. Petersburg,” he noted.

The co-chairs also plan to discuss next steps in the negotiations process including proposals on the table that could lead to a comprehensive settlement, Warlick added.

Besides, the co-chairs will hold consultations on the settlement of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in Moscow Sept. 8.

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 Dec.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.

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