French mediator says OSCE lacks resources to resolve Karabakh – Azeri agency

Turan news agency
27 Jan 05

Baku, 27 January: “The OSCE Minsk Group cannot resolve the Karabakh
conflict for Azerbaijan and Armenia. The cochairmen of the OSCE Minsk
Group can support the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan in
establishing dialogue and holding talks. Confidence should be built
between the leaders of the two countries in the first place and then
between the peoples,” the new French cochairman of the OSCE Minsk
Group, Bernard Fassier, said at a news conference in Baku today.

Commenting on the resolution of PACE [Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe] on Nagornyy Karabakh, Fassier said that “this is
the position of an organization which is one of the major pillars of
democracy in Europe”. Fassier believes that other organizations
should express their position on the Karabakh conflict as well.
Pointing to the interest of the EU and the UN in the conflict, Fassier
expressed the wish that those organizations adhere to a single
position and not compete with each other.

In Fassier’s opinion, the OSCE Minsk Group does not have adequate
resources to facilitate a solution to the conflict. “The Minsk Group
is a political forum. It can put forward political ideas. However, it
does not have financial resources to implement those ideas. But the
European Union has enough economic capacity,” Fassier said.

[Passage omitted: Fassier’s background]