The United States, Russia and France have done nothing to broker a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Prime Minister Ali Hasanov claimed on Wednesday.
“In the last 20 years the three countries co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group have not taken a single step to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” Azerbaijani news agencies quoted Hasanov as saying. “I will not stop criticizing them until the [Armenian] occupation of our lands ends.”
“The reason why this problem has not been settled is the unfair position of the U.S., France and Russia,” he told a government-organized conference in Baku titled “The great leader Heydar Aliyev – the founder of the contemporary Azerbaijani state.”
Azerbaijani leaders and President Ilham Aliyev in particular have for years criticized the mediators for not helping Baku regain control over Karabakh and surrounding territories. Some of them have accused both the West and Russia of pro-Armenian bias.
In April 2014, Aliyev denounced the international community’s failure to impose any sanctions on Armenia because of the Karabakh dispute. He also demanded that Western nations stop issuing entry visas to Karabakh Armenian leaders visiting the United States and Europe on a regular basis.
The Armenian authorities have been far more supportive of the mediators’ efforts in their public statements, saying that they are not to blame for the lack of progress in the Karabakh peace process.
The U.S., Russian and French diplomats co-heading the Minsk Group held separate talks with the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in Paris last week in another attempt to revive that process. They said they will again visit the conflict zone soon and try to arrange another meeting between Aliyev and President Serzh Sarkisian later this year.