Russia to support Karabakh solution suitable to all parties
By Yelena Starkova

ITAR-TASS News Agency
June 14, 2005 Tuesday

MOSCOW, June 14 — Russia is ready to support that option of resolving
the Nagorno Karabakh problem which will suit all the parties involved,
and act as a guarantor of settlement, if a compromise is reached,
Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said on Tuesday.

“We oppose against the pressing of any recipes from the outside on the
parties to the conflict, and assume that the Azerbaijanis and Armenians
bear the main responsibility for a final choice,” Yakovenko said.

In his view, a solution of the problem will be viable if it brings
back stability and quiet to Transcaucasia, and helps preserve the
geopolitical balance of forces in the post-conflict period, preventing
the region from becoming an area of international political and
military rivalry.

The spokesman noted that the Russian Foreign Ministry gives a positive
valuation to the results of the recent meeting between the Azerbaijani
and Armenian presidents in Warsaw in May 2005, which gave an impulse
to the search for the soonest political settlement of the Karabakh
conflict.