AzerNews, Azerbaijan
Feb 3 2005

Settlement depends on conflicting sides

OSCE Minsk Group may only foster dialogue – French co-chair
The OSCE Minsk Group cannot settle the Upper Garabagh conflict
instead of Azerbaijan and Armenia, the new French co-chair of the
OSCE Minsk Group, Bernard Fassier, said. He stated that the co-chairs
may assist the sides only in fostering dialogue.

First of all, trust should be established between the two presidents
and afterwards, between the two peoples, Fassier told a news
conference during his two-day familiarization visit to Baku last
week.
The co-chair said the OSCE MG does not have considerable resources to
assist in resolving the problem. “The Minsk Group is a political
forum and it may put forth political ideas. However, it has no
financial resources to implement them”.

As for Armenia’s withdrawing its armed forces from the occupied Azeri
land, Fassier said that the “the co-chairs are unlikely to say
anything specific in this respect, as a relevant decision should be
made by the conflicting sides”.
President Ilham Aliyev, in a meeting with Fassier on Thursday, stated
that the OSCE-mediated talks on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over
Upper Garabagh, carried out over the last ten years, had been
fruitless.
Aliyev said, however, that the active work carried out by the OSCE MG
of late and the ongoing talks between the two countries’ foreign
ministers “allow us to hope for certain progress in the settlement
process”.
The President emphasized that Upper Garabagh and the adjacent seven
regions, which are historically Azerbaijani territories, are occupied
by Armenian armed forces and that Azerbaijan entered the United
Nations with these areas included within its boundaries. Azerbaijan’s
position on the conflict resolution, based on the principles of the
country’s territorial integrity, remains unchanged, he said.
Fassier said that the unresolved status of the conflict is impeding
not only peace and stability in the South Caucasus, but also the
implementation of global economic projects in a wider area, including
Central Asia. He also voiced confidence that his meeting with
President Aliyev would provide him with broader information on this
‘sensitive’ conflict.
The new co-chair acted as the French ambassador to Georgia in
1993-1997 and to Belarus in 1997-2002. He succeeded the previous
co-chair Henry Jacolin late in 2004.