OSCE MINSK GROUP HOPES TO AGREE ON BASE PRINCIPLES OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT REGULATION TILL THE END OF THE YEAR

TREND, Azerbaijan
Nov 16 2006

The Co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for the regulation of the
Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict hope that the next
meeting of the Presidents of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and Armenia Robert
Kocharyan will take place in the nearest future, Trend reports. "We
hope that this meeting will take place on November 28, within the
CIS Summit in Minsk," the Russian Co-chair of the Minsk Group Yuri
Merzlyakov informed RIA Novosti.

On November 16, the co-chairs of the Minsk Group made speeches before
the Permanent Council of the OSCE (France, USA and Russia).

According to the Russian Co-chair, the current year will present unique
window of opportunities for achieving an agreement on the settlement
of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. He said that at the beginning of
this year, both countries stated that earlier they were not as close
to the agreement.

"It would be a tragically successful chance for the Presidents
of Azerbaijan and Armenia to permit this window to close at the
beginning of the next year to agree at least on the base principles
for the future peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,"
Merzlyakov said. In addition, he said that the next election cycle
reaches in 2007-2008 – first in Armenia and then in Azerbaijan. "We
already have the experience of the negative impacts of the elections
on the negotiations," the Russian Co-chair said.

Answering the question about the possible impacts of the Kosovo
regulation on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, he
emphasized that all conflicts have own peculiarities. "However, the
regulation of the Kosovo question will somehow affect other conflicts
in the OSCE territory, including Nagorno-Karabakh," Merzlyakov said.