TERRITORIAL DISPUTE: ARMENIA, AZERBAIJAN EDGE TOWARDS DEAL

Daily Times, Pakistan
June 8 2007

BAKU: A meeting this Saturday of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan
is raising hopes that a deal could be reached on a dispute over
the volatile territory of Nagorny Karabakh that has long disfigured
this region.

The two countries have been locked in a bitter stand-off over the
mountain territory for more than a decade, poisoning efforts to
bring stability to the strategic South Caucasus region, bordered
by Russia, Turkey and Iran. Having gone to war in the early 1990s,
their forces still clash sporadically and any escalation could derail
Western efforts to promote a corridor of oil and gas pipelines from
the Caspian Sea to Europe.

Russia and Turkey have a close interest. Ankara has closed its borders
with Armenia in support of Azerbaijan, while Moscow counts Armenia
as its closest ally among the ex-Soviet states on this southern
flank. Now however diplomats are saying that a meeting this weekend
in the Russian city of Saint Petersburg between Armenian President
Robert Kocharian and his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev could
herald a breakthrough.

No one is expecting a final settlement, but diplomats say an agreement
on basic principles could be reached by the end of this year. "If
they decide they want to resolve the last few issues on the table then
it’s realistic that you could anticipate the signing of an agreement
on the basic principles this year," US Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State Matthew Bryza, who is mediating in the talks, said in the
Azerbaijani capital Baku. The top French mediator, Bernard Fassier,
said that "never in the past have the two sides been this close to a
possible agreement," but cautioned that "this does not mean a deal
is at hand. It means that it is perhaps less far away than it was
before."French, Russian and US diplomats are mediating under the
auspices of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE).Diplomats said the two sides could set aside the issue of the
final status of Nagorny Karabakh in favour of a step-by-step plan to
deal with other contentious matters.