WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY HALF CLOSED?
By Aghavni Harutyunian

AZG Armenian Daily
25/05/2006

“I am not desperate about it [Nagorno Karabakh conflict]; I wouldn’t
say I’m optimistic. It depends on the two parties concerned, Armenia
and Azerbaijan.

They have to come to an agreement. We can try to [help] them to do
so, but they need to come to an agreement,” OSCE chairman in office,
Belgian foreign minister Karel De Gucht told RFE/RL. “Sometimes you
have more hope, and sometimes the hope is fading away.

What we must do is continue to the end of the year, to the bitter
end of our chairmanship-in-office, to try to find ways and means to
get out of this frozen conflict,” he said. Among the stambling block
on the way of Nagorno Karabakh regulation Karel De Gucht mentioned
the closed Armenian-Turkish border: “the closure of the border with
Turkey is one of the elements that is complicating the whole conflict.”

Curiously enough the OSCE chairman in office says for the first time
that 2006 will not be a solution year contrary to statements of the
mediating mission. Up to this moment, only the negotiating sides used
to reveal such pessimism. Perhaps, one can assume that the OSCE does
not see the “window of opportunity” on the other side of which “laid”
conflict regulation.