"Baku's sustained military buildup coupled with declining economic conditions in Azerbaijan are raising the potential that the conflict will escalate in 2016," says Statement for the Record Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community published on the website of U.S. Senate on February 9.
According to the author of the report Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, "Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the separatist region of Nagorno-Karabakh remained high in 2015.Azerbaijan's aversion to publicly relinquishing its claim to Nagorno-Karabakh proper and Armenia's reluctance to give up territory it controls will continue to complicate a peaceful resolution."
Since 1992 the OSCE Minsk Group represented by co-chairs from Russia, U.S. and France has been mediating resolution of the conflict unleashed by Azerbaijan in 1988. At present the peace process is based on the Madrid Principles suggested by the OSCE MG in 2007 in Madrid and renovated in 2009.