THE MINSK GROUP HAS NO OFFERS; THERE ARE OFFERS TO THEM

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[06:43 pm] 27 September, 2006

There will be no new offers about the settlement of the Nagorno
Karabakh conflict in 2006, the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs informed
the co-chairs of the Dortmund conference. The co-chairs sent a letter
to the participants of the conference informing them about this and
about other developments after the 10th round.

Representative of the Armenian side of the group in the Dortmund
conference working on the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, former
Defense Minister Vagharshak Haroutyunyan gave several details about
the content of the letter. Namely, the 11th round will take place in
October in Moscow. According to Vagharshak Haroutyunyan, during the
whole process of settlement of the Karabakh conflict the only realistic
variant for the sides was the frame convention which was signed by
all the sides of the conflict – Armenia, Karabakh and Azerbaijan.

According to the co-chairs of the Dortmund conference, this document
points at the real ways of settling the conflict. And as far as the
OSCE Minsk group is not going to introduce any new offers in 2006,
the co-chairs of the Dortmund conference offer the OSCE Minsk group
co-chairs to discuss the principles of the frame convention and to
try to find solutions within the framework of the convention.

Vagharshak Haroutyunyan reminded about the main principles the frame
convention was signed about, "Karabakh receives an interim status and
becomes a negotiating side, takes up commitments and signs documents
as a side of the conflict".

The other possible approach is to settle the problem by two
phases. The first is to create an atmosphere of mutual trust by means
of compromise. And as soon as there is progress, the ways to settle
the conflict can be found by means of three-party negotiations.