KARABAKH SETTLEMENT BASED ON MADRID UNDERSTANDINGS POSSIBLE UNDER NEXT PRESIDENT – ARMENIAN PRESIDENT

Russia & CIS Military Newswire
January 21, 2008 Monday 10:01 AM MSK

Armenian President Robert Kocharian has spoken of the possibility
of settling the conflict in Karabakh on the basis of the Madrid
understandings of the leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

"A solution to the issue of Karabakh can be found in actual fact,
if the logic of the Madrid document is followed. But there will be
no agreement in the near future and the next president of Armenia
will continue conflict settlement talks," he told the press in Yerevan.

Through its Foreign Ministry Armenia has expressed its attitude to
the Madrid document nothing that the contents of the document is
accepted by both sides, but Armenia sticks to a different approach
on some of its provisions.

"The document lies in the context of the negotiating process but
we differ over several provisions and talks will continue on them,"
he siad.

Cochairmen of the OSCE Minsk group submitted the basic principles of
the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict to a session of the
OSCE council of foreign ministers in Madrid in November 2007.