OSCE Chairperson-in-Office/Minister of Foreign Affairs of R. Serbia Ivica Dacic met at the Munich Security Conference, today, Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group (Ambassador of the Russian Federation Igor Popov, US Ambassador James Warlick and Ambassador of France Pierre Andrier) with whom he discussed the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. The talks were also attended by OSCE Secretary General Lamberto Zannier and OSCE Chairperson’s Personal Representative Andrzej Kasprzyk.

All the participants agreed that the military situation along the Line of Contact and the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan was deteriorating, jeopardizing regional stability and threatening civilian lives. The twelve killed and 18 wounded referred to in monitor reports of Ambassador Kasprzyk for the month of January are the highest human toll confirmed for the opening month of a year since the ceasefire agreement was reached in 1994. With some 60 casualties in 2014, it is feared that this worrying trend of violence will continue.
There is no military solution to this conflict and the belligerent parties must put an end to the use of force. We urge them to stop incursions and attacks on villages and civilians, discontinue threats of retaliation and disproportionate use of force, and to take additional steps towards relaxation of tensions and ceasefire consolidation. We consider unacceptable that security guarantees are not fully honoured during OSCE monitoring missions.
We further wish to recall the joint statement by heads of delegations of the Co-Chair countries at the Ministerial Council in Basel, on 4 December 2014, calling upon all to commit themselves to addressing the humanitarian issues, including exchange of prisoners and human remains, in the spirit of the Astrakhan statement of October 2010.
Co-Chairs of the Minsk Group, fully supported by the OSCE Chair, are ready to organize an intensified negotiation process that would bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict, which has been leaving scars in the region for far too long already. We strongly encourage all to find the political will to launch this process immediately, without question.