Azerbaijanis living in the United States met with the U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group.

A delegation of the representatives of the Azerbaijani community of Washington and other regions met with James Warlick on April 18, AzerTag state news agency reported.

The meeting was organized by the U.S. Azeris Network (USAN) at the U.S. State Department.

The representatives of the Azerbaijani community discussed the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at the meeting and expressed hope that the conflict be settled peacefully soon.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict emerged in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Since a lengthy war in the early 1990s that displaced over one million Azerbaijanis, Armenian armed forces have occupied over 20 percent of Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh and seven adjacent regions.

The UN Security Council’s four resolutions on Armenian withdrawal have not been enforced to this day.

Peace talks, mediated by Russia, France and the U.S. through the OSCE Minsk Group, are underway on the basis of a peace outline proposed by the Minsk Group co-chairs and dubbed the Madrid Principles. The negotiations have been largely fruitless so far.

They also discussed the progress made in negotiations for settling the dispute after Warlick’s appointment, as well as the results of the activities of the U.S. co-chair.

Warlick was appointed as the U.S.co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group on August 5, 2013, by State Secretary John Kerry.

Following the meeting, Warlick thanked the USAN for the meeting.

“Thanks to the U.S. Azeri Network for the meeting yesterday. I look forward to visiting communities outside Washington,” Warlick wrote on his Twitter page.

AzerNews