ARMENIAN MINISTER ASSESSES PARIS MEETING AS NORMAL

Armenian Public TV
Oct 25 2006

[Presenter] The meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers, Vardan Oskanyan and Elmar Mammadyarov, ended in Paris
yesterday. It was attended by the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk Group
[for the settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict].

The meeting was held in a positive atmosphere and was a continuation
of the discussions on the new principles of settling the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict proposed by the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen during
the Moscow meeting of the two countries’ foreign ministers.

In order to clarify their positions even more, the ministers reached
an agreement to continue the discussions at the level of the foreign
ministers. Another meeting is planned to be held in Brussels on 14
November on the sidelines of the Armenia-EU cooperation council.

[Passage omitted: France believes that it is important that the OSCE
Minsk Group deals with the Karabakh settlement]

[Oskanyan] In general, it was a normal meeting. This meeting was a
continuation of the Moscow meeting because during the Moscow meeting
the co-chairmen proposed a number of new ideas regarding which no
agreement has been reached between the foreign ministers so far. The
goal of the negotiations has not changed, and the document that is
on the negotiating table has been discussed by the ministers several
times. But there are major problems on which no agreement has been
reached by the ministers.

We discussed in Yerevan and Stepanakert [Xankandi] the ideas proposed
by the co-chairmen during the Moscow meeting. Today we displayed our
specific positions in Paris. Azerbaijan did the same. The atmosphere
of the negotiations was positive and constructive. I cannot say that
our positions on these problems coincide, but I believe that there
are opportunities to bring our positions closer. With this aim,
we decided to continue the discussions.