OSCE BROKERS NEW ROUND OF NK TALKS BETWEEN ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN
International Herald Tribune, France
The Associated Press
Oct 3 2006
YEREVAN, Armenia Envoys from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe on Tuesday brokered a new round of talks between
foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict following a tense impasse.
Yuri Merzlyakov, a Russian diplomat who co-chairs the so-called Minsk
group of the OSCE dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said
the two nations’ foreign ministers were to meet Friday in Moscow. He
said a time and venue for a meeting of presidents of Armenia and
Azerbaijan remain to be negotiated.
The foreign ministers’ meeting would restart bilateral talks which
have been interrupted recently due to the lack of progress.
"We would like to rejuvenate direct contacts between the sides,
and I think we have achieved this goal," said U.S. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State Matthew J. Bryza, another co-chair.
OSCE envoys held talks in Armenia Tuesday a day after visiting
Azerbaijan.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region in Azerbaijan that has been under the
control of Armenian and ethnic-Armenian Karabakh forces since a 1994
cease-fire ended a six-year separatist war that killed about 30,000
people and drove about 1 million from their homes. The region’s final
status has not been worked out, and years of talks under the auspices
of OSCE mediators have brought little visible result.
Talks in France in February between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev
and Armenian President Robert Kocharian about the enclave broke down,
and the two leaders again failed to agree on principles for settling
the conflict when they met again in Romania in June.
"We aren’t saying that we are on the verge of a grand breakthrough
or that the difficult problems have got any easier, but we do sense
the willingness of the sides to think in a deeper way and look for
a way to move ahead," Bryza said.
He said that lack of trust between the parties continued to hinder
the talks and said that "an effort to rebuild that confidence" was
particularly important.
Earlier this year, OSCE mediators proposed a set of principles for
settling the conflict which included withdrawing Armenian troops
from the Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh but
suggested that a corridor linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh would
remain under Armenian control.
The principles also included deploying international peacekeepers,
resettling displaced people and a referendum – its timing and format
to be worked out later – on the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Merzlyakov said Azerbaijan and Armenia were advised to proceed from
the same set of principles. "It’s wrong to say that the things already
done are no longer on the table," he said.
YEREVAN, Armenia Envoys from the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe on Tuesday brokered a new round of talks between
foreign ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict following a tense impasse.
Yuri Merzlyakov, a Russian diplomat who co-chairs the so-called Minsk
group of the OSCE dealing with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, said
the two nations’ foreign ministers were to meet Friday in Moscow. He
said a time and venue for a meeting of presidents of Armenia and
Azerbaijan remain to be negotiated.
The foreign ministers’ meeting would restart bilateral talks which
have been interrupted recently due to the lack of progress.
"We would like to rejuvenate direct contacts between the sides,
and I think we have achieved this goal," said U.S. Deputy Assistant
Secretary of State Matthew J. Bryza, another co-chair.
OSCE envoys held talks in Armenia Tuesday a day after visiting
Azerbaijan.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a region in Azerbaijan that has been under the
control of Armenian and ethnic-Armenian Karabakh forces since a 1994
cease-fire ended a six-year separatist war that killed about 30,000
people and drove about 1 million from their homes. The region’s final
status has not been worked out, and years of talks under the auspices
of OSCE mediators have brought little visible result.
Talks in France in February between Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev
and Armenian President Robert Kocharian about the enclave broke down,
and the two leaders again failed to agree on principles for settling
the conflict when they met again in Romania in June.
"We aren’t saying that we are on the verge of a grand breakthrough
or that the difficult problems have got any easier, but we do sense
the willingness of the sides to think in a deeper way and look for
a way to move ahead," Bryza said.
He said that lack of trust between the parties continued to hinder
the talks and said that "an effort to rebuild that confidence" was
particularly important.
Earlier this year, OSCE mediators proposed a set of principles for
settling the conflict which included withdrawing Armenian troops
from the Azerbaijani territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh but
suggested that a corridor linking Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh would
remain under Armenian control.
The principles also included deploying international peacekeepers,
resettling displaced people and a referendum – its timing and format
to be worked out later – on the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Merzlyakov said Azerbaijan and Armenia were advised to proceed from
the same set of principles. "It’s wrong to say that the things already
done are no longer on the table," he said.