‘Iran ready to mediate in Karabakh’

Iran’s Ambassador to Baku Mohsen Pak-Ayeen has stressed Tehran’s readiness to mediate between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Karabakh dispute.

Pak-Ayeen said on Saturday that transregional powers do not seek the resolution of the Karabakh dispute, stressing that continuation of the conflict will harm regional countries.

He added that foreign powers use the dispute as a tool to pursue their objectives in South Caucasus.

If requested by the parties to the dispute, Iran is ready to mediate in and present its plan for the settlement of the conflict, the envoy said.

Both Azerbaijan and Armenia claim the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, which is largely populated by Armenians but located in Azerbaijan.

Ethnic Armenian forces took control over the enclave which accounts for 16 percent of Azerbaijan in the early 1990s during a six-year war with the country that took place from February 1988 to May 1994.

The conflict left an estimated 30,000 people dead and one million displaced before the two sides agreed to a cease-fire in 1994. However, a peace accord has never been signed and the dispute still remains unsettled.

Iran has on several occasions offered to intervene in the dispute.

“We believe that the Karabakh issue will be resolved through dialogue and the commitment of both sides to justice, and Tehran is ready to negotiate with them within this framework,” Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a joint press conference with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev in November, 2010.