AZERI, ARMENIAN MINISTERS FAIL TO MEET IN SLOVENIA – AGENCY

Azerbaijani news agency APA
29 Aug 06

Baku, 29 August: Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers, Elmar
Mammadyarov and Vardan Oskanyan, have not met to discuss a settlement
to the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict at the international conference
Caspian Outlook 2008 Strategic Forum in Slovenia, a source in the
Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said. The reason is that the co-chairmen
of the OSCE Minsk Group, which is designed to mediate a solution to
the conflict, Bernard Fassier (France) and Yuriy Merzlyakov (Russia),
were not in Ljubljana. Only Matthew Bryza, the US co-chairman of
the group and the US deputy assistant secretary of state, joined the
conference, but he did not suggest that the ministers meet.

The head of the press and information policy department of the Foreign
Ministry, Tahir Tagizada, has told APA that Mammadyarov met Bryza
to discuss the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict on the day of his arrival
in Slovenia.

A new round of talks between the Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign
ministers as part of the Prague process [which envisages a
stage-by-stage solution] are expected to take place in a European
country in mid-September.