Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has made of the conduct of the referendum held in Nagorno-Karabakh on 20 February 2017.

The UK remains concerned about the high tension in the security situation around Nagorno-Karabakh, which has manifested itself in several recent violations of the cease-fire regime between Azerbaijani and Armenian forces, most recently in late February 2017. We have repeatedly called on both Armenia and Azerbaijan to exercise restraint, ensure full observance of the agreed ceasefire regime, and engage constructively and intensively in the search for a negotiated peaceful settlement to the Nagorno Karabakh conflict through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Process. We shall continue to convey this message via our diplomatic contacts with both Baku and Yerevan.

Along with our EU partners, the UK has made clear that we do not recognise the legal and constitutional framework within which the so-called referendum that took place in Nagorno- Karabakh on 20 February 2017 was held. We share our EU partners’ view that this referendum cannot be allowed to impact on the process of negotiating a peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict via the OSCE Minsk Process.