Armenian foreign minister hails Karabakh talks in Prague as positive
Public Television of Armenia, Yerevan
1 Sep 04
[Presenter] The Armenian foreign minister has said that the major
goal of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign ministers is to lay
the foundation for the negotiations on a peaceful settlement to
the [Nagornyy] Karabakh conflict. Commenting on his Prague meeting
with the Azerbaijani foreign minister [on 30 August], the Armenian
foreign minister said that it was early to speak about sharing a
joint position on the Karabakh conflict. Oskanyan is confident that
the meetings of the two countries’ foreign ministers are fruitful and
they are conducive to increasing rapprochement between the parties
to the conflict.
[Oskanyan] My overall assessment of the meeting is positive. But this
should be within the context. We have said more than once that the
aim of these meetings at the level of ministers and co-chairs [of
the OSCE Minsk Group] is to lay the foundation for the negotiations
in order to continue discussions on this basis in the future. This
is our fourth meeting and at these meetings, we wanted to create a
basis for the principal issues, and on this basis, we will continue
our negotiations further and talk about more specific issues.
I cannot say that we have set up this basis. However, in the context
of establishing this foundation, I believe that this meeting was the
most important compared to the previous ones and think that we have
taken an important step towards this foundation.
Therefore, I assess this meeting as positive and consider that if
we continue the negotiations in this direction, we shall be able to
create that foundation, which will provide us with more opportunities
for a positive outcome in the future.