U.S. ambassador to NATO Kay Bailey Hutchison said that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict should be settled on the issues of the boundary lines and Azerbaijan's sovereignty issues.
"NATO is trying to do what the U.S. is doing, what Russia is doing as well, and that is to try to stop the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh," she noted.
Hutchison recalled that this is an issue that "has been festering for 30 years."
"There is a Minsk Group of co-chairs, which is U.S., Russia, and France, that is willing to go into the initial conflict, which is where are the sovereign boundaries of Azerbaijan and what can accommodate the Armenian population within those boundaries? That can be settled, and then this conflict would end," she said.
"We are encouraging both sides – and I believe that both foreign ministers are going to be meeting in Washington; at least that was a plan for them to meet in Washington this week – to discuss a way to stop the violence, stop the killing.
This issue cannot be settled in a military conflict, "it needs to be settled on the issues of the boundary lines and the sovereignty issues," Hutchison pointed out.
"And that’s what we are pushing for, Russia is pushing for the same, as well as France," the U.S. ambassador to NATO concluded.
The Armenian armed forces committed a large-scale provocation, subjecting the positions of the Azerbaijani army to intensive shelling from large-caliber weapons, mortars, and artillery installations of various calibers in the front-line zone on Sept. 27 at 05:00 (Msk). The command of the Azerbaijani Army decided to launch a counter-offensive operation of Azerbaijani troops along the entire front to suppress the combat activity of the Armenian armed forces and ensure the safety of the civilian population. To date, Fizuli and Jabrayil districts, including the cities of Jabrayil and Fizuli, the city of Zangilan and part of Zangilan district, the city of Hadrut and a number of villages in the Khojavend region, the villages of Sugovushan and Talish in the Terter region, as well as the strategically important Murovdag mountain were liberated.
