President of France Nicolas Sarkozy expressed hope for establishment of durable peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan, when speaking at a joint press conference with President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan in Yerevan, Friday.
Nicolas Sarkozy said that resumption of the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations within the OSCE Minsk Group is the only solution to the Karabakh conflict. "We can see that it is possible to find points of contact in this problem for establishment of peace," Sarkozy said. He stressed that the South Caucasus region is rather instable and establishment of peace is very importance for development of the two countries.
France is an OSCE MG Co-chair state alongside with the USA and Russia. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict broke out on February 28 1988 in the Azerbaijani Sumgait with massacre of Armenians as a peculiar response of Azerbaijanis to the peaceful demand of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous Region, part of the Azerbaijani SSR, to unite with the Armenian SSR. This resulted in other pogroms of Armenians in Baku, Kirovabad and other regions of Azerbaijan populated with Armenians. In 1991 Azerbaijan unleashed war against peaceful populations of Nagorno-Karabakh, expulsing ethnic Armenians from the territory of Azerbaijan. Dozens of thousands of peaceful residents on both parties were killed in the military actions, and hundreds of thousands were left homeless and have become refugees. In 1994 in Bishkek in mediation of the OSCE MG, the NKR, Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a Protocol on Ceasefire that is observed more or less so far.
