Azeri, Armenian foreign ministers set to meet on 10 January – TV
ANS TV, Baku
27 Dec 04
[Presenter] The time of the next round of consultations between the
Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers on resolving the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict has been clarified. Azerbaijani Deputy Foreign
Minister Araz Azimov has said that the meeting is set for 10
January. However, a special OSCE mission plans to monitor the
situation only on the occupied Azerbaijani districts around Nagornyy
Karabakh.
[Correspondent, over video of UN] Azerbaijan will not submit to the UN
General Assembly’s discussion a draft resolution on the situation on
[Azerbaijan’s] occupied lands. The Russian co-chairman of the OSCE
Minsk Group, Yuriy Merzlyakov, has said that the Azerbaijani and
Armenian foreign ministers have agreed on this. In exchange for this,
Armenia will help in all ways the OSCE monitoring on the occupied
territories. In an interview with ANS, the Russian co-chairman said
that the verbal agreement had been reached on this.
[Merzlyakov in Russian with Azeri voice-over, on the phone] The draft
resolution will not be submitted for voting as I understood from the
talks we had held. The agreement was reached after the lengthy talks
between the foreign ministers. In any case, I think that all the
co-chairmen realized this because when we [co-chairmen] talked to each
other, I did not hear anyone understanding the results of the talks in
a different way.
[Correspondent, over video of Azimov] The Azerbaijani deputy foreign
minister and the president’s special envoy for Nagornyy Karabakh, Araz
Azimov, neither denied nor confirmed the aforesaid [verbal] agreement.
In any case, the resettlement of the Armenians on Azerbaijan’s seven
occupied districts has been put on the agenda of the UN General
Assembly session under Paragraph 163. There have been no changes in
the session’s agenda so far, end quote.
The OSCE monitoring mission will only examine if the Armenians are
being resettled on the occupied lands, Azimov said. The mission’s
mandate does not envisage the political assessment of the situation.
To recap, the OSCE mission which is to head for the occupied lands on
25 January will monitor the illegal resettlement of the Armenians on
the occupied lands around Nagornyy Karabakh, including Lacin
District. Merzlyakov said that the monitoring in Nagornyy Karabakh had
not been talked about when the mandate of the OSCE special mission was
determined.
[Merzlyakov, on the phone] This is not our task. All this is about the
occupied territories around Nagornyy Karabakh. It is very difficult to
examine Nagornyy Karabakh because Armenians live there. They have
always lived there. This is another issue. No one should live on the
occupied lands and this differs them from the other lands. That is
Azerbaijanis who have left these lands and the Armenians should not
live there.
[Correspondent] One can only come to a conclusion from the aforesaid
that if the Armenians hamper the work of the OSCE special mission and
create some other obstacles to the diplomats in recording the
resettlement of the Armenians, Azerbaijan will be able to submit for
the discussion the issue which is still on the UN agenda.
Ceyhun Asgarov for ANS.
[The next round of peace talks between the Azerbaijani and Armenian
foreign ministers will be held in Prague on 15 January 2005, 1700 gmt
23 December ANS TV quoted Merzlyakov as saying]