YEREVAN — Nagorno-Karabakh’s status remains unresolved after the 2020 Armenian-Azerbaijani war, the U.S. ambassador to Armenia, Lynne Tracy, reportedly reiterated on Monday.
Tracy and Armenian Deputy Prime Minister Hambardzum Matevosyan discussed the conflict, among other issues, at a meeting in Yerevan.
An Armenian government statement on the meeting said Matevosyan praised the U.S. involvement in long-running international efforts to broker a Karabakh settlement.
“Ambassador Tracy concurred with the deputy prime minister: the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh’s status is not resolved and that process must be carried out under the aegis of the co-chairmanship of the OSCE Minsk Group,” added the statement.
Tracy already made such statements last year after U.S. President Joe Biden said Washington remains committed to facilitating a “comprehensive” Armenian-Azerbaijani peace deal together with Russia and France, the two other co-chairs of the Minsk Group.
“We do not see the status of Nagorno-Karabakh as having been resolved,” the envoy insisted on September 13 in remarks condemned by Azerbaijan.
The Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry echoed President Ilham Aliyev’s claims that Azerbaijan’s victory in the war put an end to the conflict.
Aliyev repeated those claims in early January. He also mocked the Minsk Group co-chairs and questioned the wisdom of their continued activities.
“They must not deal with the Karabakh conflict because that conflict has been resolved,” Aliyev told Azerbaijani television.
A senior Russian diplomat said a few days later that the U.S., Russian and French mediators should be able to resume their visits to Nagorno-Karabakh as part of their peace efforts. Armenian officials backed that statement.
The co-chairs had for decades travelled to Karabakh and met with its ethnic Armenian leadership during regular tours of the conflict zone. The visits practically stopped with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and the subsequent outbreak of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war.
The mediators planned to resume their shuttle diplomacy after organizing talks between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers in New York in September. The trip has still not taken place, however.
