ITAR-TASS News Agency
TASS
March 16, 2004 Tuesday

Direct negotiations are only way to Karabakh settlement- OSCE

By Sevindzh Abdullayeva, Viktor Shulman

BAKU

OSCE thinks that direct negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia
are the only way to the Karabakh settlement, Bulgarian Foreign
Minister and OSCE Chairman-in-Office Solomon Pasi said at a Tuesday
meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev in Baku.

He noted with regret that the OSCE Minsk Group mission had not
brought positive results. “I expect a lot from dialog between the two
presidents, and I will declare that during a visit to Yerevan,” Pasi
said. Pasi will go to Yerevan on Tuesday evening for discussing the
Karabakh problem with the Armenian administration.

The Azerbaijani president said he hoped for more intensive efforts of
the Minsk Group in the Karabakh settlement. The unsettled problem “is
a great danger to the region,” he said.

“Solomon Pasi promised support to the Azerbaijani striving for closer
integration into Europe,” the AzerTadz news agency reports.

The absence of dialog is characteristic of conflicts in the South
Caucasus, Pasi said. He noted that OSCE would boost dialog between
Azerbaijan and Armenia for settling the Karabakh conflict. “We can
offer a dozen of settlement options, but neither of them will be
workable until Azerbaijan and Armenia reach understanding,” he said.