Situation in Karabakh is the result of military aggression – Bernard Fassier

The existing situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is the result of military aggression, OSCE Minsk Group French Co-Chair Bernard Fassier has said in Karabakhi capital Stepanakert on October 22.

According to the Russian-language news agency Regnum, Fassier also said that peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict is the only way to go.

“The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be settled only in a peaceful way, and our goal is to create conditions for a final settlement,” Fassier was quoted as saying.

“When people are talking about war and about solving the conflict with the use of force, it does not contribute to the creation of environment favorable for discussions,” Fassier said, adding that the “current situation in Karabakh is a result of military aggression”.

OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs Robert Bradtke of US, Igor Popov of Russia, Bernard Fassier of France and Personal Representative of the OSCE Chairperson-in-Office Andrjzei Kasprzyk visited Stepanakert on October 22 and then crossed the Line of Contact into Azerbaijan.

Earlier, they were in Armenia and held talks with Armenia’s president and foreign minister.
The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict sparked in the early 1990s when Karabakhi Armenians voiced their intention to live independently and later spiralled into a bloody war, leaving around 30,000 killed and more than a million displaced.