Pompeo says violence must stop in Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urged Armenia and Azerbaijan on Tuesday to cease hostilities as clashes continued over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but is run by ethnic Armenians and is supported by Armenia. It broke away from Azerbaijan in a war in the 1990s, but is not recognised by any country as an independent republic.

Pompeo said during a visit to Crete that he had discussed the clashes in talks earlier with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias.

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"The foreign minister and I addressed the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh where both sides need to stop the violence and work with the Minsk Group co-chairs and return to substantive negotiations as quickly as possible," he said.

The Minsk group was set up by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in the early 1990s to encourage a resolution to the conflict. It is co-chaired by France, Russia and the United States.
France also wants Minsk Group talks.

"We will trigger in the coming days a co-ordination of the Minsk Group to clear up what happened, who is responsible and find a way out," an official at President Emmanuel Macron`s office said on Tuesday.

The clashes between Armenian and Azeri forces over Nagorno-Karabakh have increased concern about stability in the South Caucasus region, a corridor for pipelines carrying oil and gas to world markets.

Both sides accuse each other of using heavy artillery in this week`s clashes in which dozens of people had been killed and hundreds wounded.