The OSCE has set up a fact-finding mission to monitor the Azerbaijani lands occupied by Armenia. The mission includes the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs and representatives from Germany, Italy, Finland, Sweden as well as the OSCE Secretariat, a diplomatic source told AssA-Irada. The mission is scheduled to arrive in Baku late in January-early in February 2005 to further visit Upper Garabagh and monitor the occupied lands. A report will be prepared after the monitoring is over. Azerbaijan has lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1990s after a bloody conflict with Armenia.  (3-JAN-2005)


Late this November, the Azerbaijani government proposed to put the issue on the occupied territories on the agenda of the UN General Assembly session and establish a fact-finding mission within the OSCE.
Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Yuri Merzlyakov has told Armenian media that the OSCE mission will conduct monitoring not in Upper Garabagh itself, but only in the seven regions adjacent to it.  Merzlyakov said Armenia will provide suitable conditions for the work of the OSCE mission, while Azerbaijan will allegedly withdraw its proposal to discuss the illegal settlement of Armenians its occupied territories at the United Nations.
Azerbaijani officials have not expressed their position on the matter yet.

Unbiased monitoring
Commenting on the fact that Azerbaijani and Turkish representatives have not been included in the mission, chairman of the Center for Political Innovation and Technology Mubariz Ahmadoghlu said Azerbaijan has enough evidence to ensure that the mission experts will conduct an unbiased monitoring in the occupied territories.
“Not only Armenia but also several international organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, are engaged in purposeful settlement of population in Upper Garabagh and other occupied lands of Azerbaijan.” The political analyst said that several families of Armenian descent, who became victims of an earthquake that hit Armenia in 1988, were settled in the Lachin region, another Azerbaijani territory under occupation.
This fact was indirectly confirmed by German, Russian and Armenian representatives of an international organization on search of prisoners of war and missing people. They officially stated that all living conditions were created for mentally retarded Armenians in a mountainous area in the Lachin region.
“Armenia will not be able to hide their large-scale activities on settling population in the occupied Azerbaijani lands,” said Ahmadoghlu.

Baku expects progress in January talks
Baku expects considerable progress at the meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers upcoming in January, Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov told local ATV channel.

“If Armenia continues to approach the issue seriously, as it did at the Sofia and Brussels meetings of foreign ministers, remarkable changes will be achieved in the Upper Garabagh conflict settlement.”
Asked whether the January meeting can be termed as a start of the second stage of Prague meetings, Mammadyarov said: “In general, I am opposed to breaking the talks into stages. The meeting should be considered continuation of the Prague process.”
The foreign minister added that the parties will set the exact time of the meeting early next month after a telephone conversation.