ARMENIAN AND AZERI LEADERS NEED TO PREPARE PUBLICS FOR PEACE AND NOT FOR WAR

PanARMENIAN.Net
30.06.2006 13:20 GMT+04:00

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ In November last year the Minsk Group Co-Chairs
reported to this Council that the two sides in the Nagorno Karabakh
conflict were poised to make a transition from negotiating to
decision-making and that a historic breakthrough in the settlement
of the conflict was possible in 2006, says the statement by the OSCE
Minsk Group made in Vienna June 22.

"During the past seven months, we intensified our mediation efforts and
worked hard to achieve the agreement of both sides on basic principles
for a settlement. We visited Baku and Yerevan three times together and
several more times separately, organized two meetings of the Ministers
of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Azerbaijan and two summits between
Presidents Kocharian and Aliyev – first in Rambouillet in February
and then in Bucharest in early June.

For the first time since 1997, when the current format of the
Co-Chairmanship of the Minsk Group was established, a joint Mission
of Representatives of the Co-Chair countries at the Deputy Foreign
Minister level traveled to the region in May in order to make clear to
the presidents of both countries that 2006 is the necessary window of
opportunity for reaching an agreement on Nagorno- Karabakh. In fact,
the delegation of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigoriy Karasin,
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, and high-ranking
French diplomat Pierre Morel – representing French Political Director
Stanislaus de Laboulaye – told the two Presidents that our three
countries expected them to take advantage of this opportunity by
reaching an agreement on core principles for a settlement at their
Bucharest summit in early June.

Our deputy ministers told the two Presidents that an agreement on
basic principles now, before the July G8 Summit in St. Petersburg,
would secure broad international support and a high level of
financial assistance for postconflict reconstruction and peacekeeping
activities. We stressed – as always – the belief of our nations and,
more widely, of the international community that the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict can be resolved in no other way than a peaceful one. Moreover,
we stressed that both leaders need to prepare their publics for peace
and not for war," the statement says.