Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and French President Emmanuel Macron have held talks on the escalation of the military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh via telephone, the press service of the Armenian prime minister announced on Friday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th October, 2020) Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and French President Emmanuel Macron have held talks on the escalation of the military conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh via telephone, the press service of the Armenian prime minister announced on Friday.
"Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan today held another telephone conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron. Prime Minister Pashinyan briefed his interlocutor on the ongoing hostilities in Nagorno-Karabakh and the developments taking place in that context," the prime minister's press service said in a statement.
Macron has called for immediate ceasefire and initiation of negotiations on the peaceful regulation of the crisis in the region within the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group, created in 1992 to negotiate an Azerbaijani-Armenian conflict over Artsakh. Notably, the group is cochaired by Russia, France and the US, and includes Armenia and Azerbaijan. Belarus, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Finland, Turkey, Italy and Sweden also hold its membership.
The statement specified that Macron keeps in close touch with Russian President Vladimir Putin, evoking his call made on Thursday to end hostilities in Karabakh to exchange prisoners and bodies of those killed.
According to the statement, Pashinyan underlined the importance of the Artsakh unrecognized Republic's "right to self-determination" amid resolving the crisis in the region, and the need for support of this initiative by the international community.
The military hostilities on the contact line in Nagorno-Karabakh began on September 27. Armenia introduced martial law and the first general mobilization over its claims that Azerbaijan receives support from Turkey, which promised to provide Baku with such amid the deterioration of the conflict. For its part, Azerbaijan declared partial mobilization.
While both parties accuse each other of initiating the conflict, the peaceful settlements of the region, including its capital of Stepanakert, are subject to artillery shelling. Russia, the US and France urged Yerevan and Baku to end hostilities and initiate peace negotiations without preconditions.
