Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian delivered a speech at the Ministerial event on the OSCE Peace Operations, addressing the Karabakh conflict among other issues.

According to the Foreign Ministry website, Nalbandian said Yerevan will host the international conference on peacekeeping operations, supported by Edmond Mulet, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations.

“I would like to once again acknowledge the central role of the United Nations for maintaining international peace and security and recall our shared conviction that the OSCE is a key structure for the peaceful settlement of disputes,” the Minister said.

Nalbandian reminded that OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs are entrusted to mediate the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.

“A team, led by the Personal Representative of the Chairman-in-Office supports the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs, monitoring the situation on the contact line. The Organization's further involvement, namely the establishment of an investigative mechanism can make a real difference,” he said.

Nalbandian stressed that political solutions should determine and guide the operational format and the possible deployment of peacekeepers.

“Minsk Group Co-chairs have stated on numerous occasions that international security guarantees would include a peacekeeping operation as one of the elements of the Basic Principles of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict settlement,” Nalbandian stated.

“Our shared problems and challenges within OSCE can be substantially different, with no universal recipe to address them. The UN Summit on Peacekeeping hailed the report of the High Level Panel on UN Peace Operations, which says: “Mandates and missions are too often based on templates instead of being tailored to support situation-specific political strategies”. We need to develop individual approaches for every single situation to avoid disrupting ongoing processes,” Nalbandian concluded.