YEREVAN AGREES TO MEETING BETWEEN SARGSYAN, ALIYEV – ARMENIAN FOREIGN MINISTER

Interfax News Agency
March 31 2008
Russia

Yerevan is ready for a meeting between Armenia’s President-elect Serzh
Sargsyan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev at the NATO summit in
Bucharest in April, since the initiative comes from the OSCE’s Minsk
Group mediating in the Karabakh conflict, Armenian Foreign Minister
Vardan Oskanian said.

"The idea was proposed by the OSCE MG, and it was accepted by Armenia,"
he told journalists on Monday.

However, Azerbaijan is trying to block the efforts of the Minsk Group,
he said. "Everything that has been done recently is an attempt to
dissolve the OSCE MG, to reject the document on the negotiating
table, which took both Armenia and Azerbaijan two years to prepare,"
Oskanian said.

"Today Azerbaijan is demonstrating its rejection of the principles
that were jointly developed and reflected in this document with its
own consent. The violation of the cease-fire, Azerbaijan’s military
rhetoric and its attempt to take the Karabakh issue to the United
Nations – all of this reflects Azerbaijan’s obvious program and
tactics," the Armenian foreign minister said.