TOP DIPLOMAT SAYS USA NOT AGAINST REGIONAL RAILWAY PROJECT – AZERI TV

ANS TV, Baku,
7 Feb 07

Excerpt from report by Azerbaijani TV station ANS on 7 February

The USA does not support the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway project,
but it is not against it either. We wish success to our friends,
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza [who arrived in
Baku for consultations on 6 February] has said.

The US Congress believes that Armenia should not be excluded from
projects in the South Caucasus.

In an interview with reporters, Bryza also spoke about the Nagornyy
Karabakh conflict. Next week the US and French co-chairs of the OSCE
Minsk Group, Matthew Bryza and Bernard Fassier, will hold consultations
in Paris on the sidelines of an international energy conference.

Bryza said that the exact date of the next meeting between the
Azerbaijani and Armenian foreign ministers is not known yet. But he
expressed the hope that the meeting will be held in a few weeks. The
meeting will depend on the ministers’ work schedules.

Bryza does not agree with the view of his Russian counterpart [Yuriy
Merzlyakov] that the Kosovo settlement plan could be used in resolving
the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict. He said that each conflict has its
own specific features and that a settlement plan cannot be used as
a model for the resolution of other conflicts.

[Passage omitted: Bryza says that the Bush administration does
not support a draft US Congress resolution on the alleged Armenian
genocide.]