Washington: Azerbaijan demands the "immediate and unconditional withdrawal" of Armenian troops from the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region, the country's President Ilham Aliyev said Wednesday at a press conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry.
Aliyev, a strongman leader in his third term, met with Kerry on the sidelines of a major nuclear security summit in Washington that starts Thursday.
"We are grateful to the US government for their efforts in finding ways to resolve long-lasting conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan," Aliyev said.
"We think that the conflict must be resolved based on United Nations Security Council resolution, which demand immediate and unconditional withdrawal of Armenian troops from our territories."
Kerry, the top diplomat for the United States, which has worked for years to help resolve the dispute, also called for "an ultimate resolution of the frozen conflict of Nagorno-Karabakh that needs to be a negotiated settlement."
Azerbaijan and Armenia, neighboring former Soviet republics, has had conflict since the late 1980s over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Mostly inhabited by ethnic Armenians but falling within Azerbaijan's borders, conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh has claimed 30,000 lives and created hundreds of thousands of refugees between 1988 and 1994.
Despite the signing of a cease-fire, there is no peace treaty and armed clashes regularly break out.
AFP
