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On Thursday, the Azerbaijani parliament called for France to be excluded from the Minsk group tasked with mediating the conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
This comes after the French Senate voted on a text calling for “recognition” of the separatist region.
In their decision, the Azerbaijani deputies recommended that the government “demand that the OSCE expel France from the joint chairmanship of the Minsk Group”.
They also urged the government to “review the political (…) and economic relations” between Baku and Paris.
The Minsk Group of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was founded in the 1990s after the first war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The main task of the group is mediation, seeking to find a solution to the problem of Nagorno-Karabakh, the unilaterally proclaimed republic inhabited by the majority of Armenians.
France, the United States and Russia occupy the presidency of the Minsk Group.
The decision of the Azerbaijani Parliament was issued a day after the French Senate voted on a non-binding resolution calling on the government to “recognize the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
The Senate also stated in its decision that it “condemns the Azerbaijani military aggression carried out with the support of the Turkish authorities and foreign mercenaries, and calls for the immediate withdrawal” of the Azerbaijani armed forces from the territories that the Armenians lost control since the September 27 in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The region declared its independence from Azerbaijan some 30 years ago, but did not win the recognition of any country, not even Armenia, to support it.
After a first war that lasted from 1988 to 1994, the region finally witnessed bloody battles that lasted for six weeks, which left more than 4,000 dead and in which Baku achieved great field victories at the expense of Yerevan.
An agreement was reached to halt hostilities under the auspices of the Kremlin on November 9, which enshrined Azerbaijan’s victory, whereby Armenia pledged to return various areas that had been out of Baku’s control thirty years ago, but allowed the preservation of the Nagorno-Karabakh region despite the reduction of its area, and stipulated the publication of Two thousand Russian blue helmets.
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