On March 14, official Yerevan said that it had turned to the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs with a request to organize negotiations with Azerbaijan on a peace treaty “on the basis of the UN Charter, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Helsinki Final Act.”
Armenia’s request for French, U.S. and Russian mediation comes amid unprecedented tensions between the West and Moscow over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The OSCE Minsk Group, which has an international mandate to broker a negotiated settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, has not yet provided an official response to Armenia’s request.
In an interview with RFE/RL’s Armenian Service today, French Ambassador to Armenia Anne Anne Louyot reaffirmed the statement of French President Emmanuel Macron made during the March 9 Armenian-French Cooperation Forum in Paris, in which he expressed his readiness “to assist the parties in finding mutually acceptable conditions and achieving peace.”
“French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that the war in Ukraine should not make us forget about the previous conflict that took place between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and we must definitely try to resolve this issue,” the ambassador said.
When asked about how she feels about Azerbaijan’s statements that the Karabakh conflict has been resolved by Baku as a result of the 2020 war and that there is nothing left for the OSCE Minsk Group to do, Louyot said: “I would like you again to pay attention to the answer of President Macron, who said that the problem does exist and that this problem needs to be addressed.”
The French ambassador said that she does not know when the visit of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs to the region is planned and whether it is planned at all.
The mediating troika have not been able to visit Nagorno-Karabakh since the six-week war in 2020 that ended in a Russian-brokered ceasefire.