Azernews.Az

By Sara Rajabova

Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the UK Foreign Office criticized the description of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as a frozen one.

Describing the conflict as frozen is misleading, because the ceasefire breaches on the contact line of Armenian and Azerbaijani troops continue, Mark Simmonds said at a debate on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in the UK parliament on February 11.

"The UK is concerned by the ongoing ceasefire breaches both along the line of contact in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian-Azerbaijani border," the official page of the UK embassy in Azerbaijan in a social network quoted Simmonds as saying.

Simmonds said the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict continues to hamper development in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, and causes further instability in an already troubled South Caucasus region.

He emphasized that the UK strongly supports the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs who lead the peace process.

The co-chairs work hard to facilitate progress, and the international community stands ready to provide further support, Simmonds added.

He also urged both sides to exercise restraint, and assured that the British government is committed to doing everything in its power to foster efforts towards the resolution of the conflict.

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.