ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER EXPRESSES OPTIMISM FOR PROGRESS ON NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Avet Demourian

AP Worldstream
Apr 05, 2006

Armenia expressed optimism Wednesday that progress could be made
toward a settlement of its dispute with Azerbaijan over the status of
the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave despite the breakdown in talks between
the two countries’ presidents earlier this year.

“The negotiations must be continued and what we have on the table
today must be used as the basis,” Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian
said at a meeting with Peter Semneby, the European Union’s special
representative in the South Caucasus region.

He said there could be no military solution to the dispute, which
sparked a six-year war that ended with a shaky cease-fire in 1994,
and urged Azerbaijan to accept that mutual compromise was necessary.

“Armenia has already made all possible compromises, there is no place
left to step back,” he said. “The time has come for Azerbaijan to
take steps so that we can get this (negotiation) process moving and
bring it to completion.” Semneby urged the two sides to act soon to
get talks under way again. “Indeed, there is a window of opportunity,
which we need to take advantage of,” he said.

Nagorno-Karabakh is inside Azerbaijan but populated mostly by ethnic
Armenians, whose troops face Azerbaijani forces across a half-mile-wide
(kilometer-wide) no man’s land. Clashes break out sporadically and
Armenian President Robert Kocharian and Azerbaijani President Ilham
Aliev have traded increasingly bellicose statements since talks to
resolve the enclave’s status broke down in February.

At least 30,000 people have been killed and 1 million made refugees in
the 18-year-old dispute. The hostilities have also hindered investment
in the strategic, oil-rich Caucasus region.

A decade of international mediation has failed to end the conflict.

The dispute has dominated both countries’ foreign policy since they
became independent with the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

Foreign mediators have been pushing for a resolution of the conflict
this year. Since neither country will have elections, their leaders
should be free of domestic pressure to stand tough on Karabakh,
the mediators have said.