Azerbaijan Says UN Should Solve Karabakh Conflict

Speaking to the UN General Assembly, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said international law and four relevant Security Council resolutions should form the legal basis of a resolution of the conflict.

Mammadyarov rejected the statement from his Armenian counterpart, Vartan Oskanian, who told the General Assembly that a Karabakh solution should be negotiated only through the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Nagorno-Karabakh is an enclave inside Azerbaijan with a mostly ethnic Armenian population. Armenian forces seized control of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan in a war in the early 1990s that claimed an estimated 30,000 lives.

A cease-fire was signed in 1994, but the two countries have failed to negotiate a settlement on the region's status.