PEOPLE LIVING IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH SHOULD DETERMINE THEIR STATUS THROUGH VOTING – U.S. DIPLOMAT

Interfax News Agency
Aug 1 2008
Russia

MOSCOW. Aug 1 (Interfax) – The people living in Nagorno-Karabakh will
decide themselves whether the republic should remain under Azerbaijan’s
jurisdiction or gain independence, said U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary
of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Matthew Bryza, a co-chair
of the OSCE Minsk Group.

"That’s what the vote would determine [] by the people who are there,
I mean by the Karabakhs themselves," Bryza told journalists in Moscow
following a meeting between the Armenian and Azeri foreign ministers
on Thursday.

"It’s the basic principles that have been talked about before, I mean
the rough framework," Bryza said.

"None of this by the way is agreed, nothing is agreed until everything
is agreed," Bryza said. "What we have suggested – only what we have
suggested – is that the Armenian troops would pull out of the seven
territories around Karabakh, there would be international peacekeepers
that are brought in there, then there would be the return of internally
displaced persons and refugees, that there would be a corridor that
connects Armenia and Nagorno- Karabakh, and there would be a process
of voting, be it a plebiscite or a referendum, you can talk about
different words, but anyway, a voting process to determine the future
of Nagorno-Karabakh, its future status," he said.

"We don’t know exactly when that would occur, all those sorts of
modalities would need to be negotiated," he added.

What is also important is that the parties trust each other and have
enough political will, Bryza said. He also warned against the danger
of a stall in the negotiations.

Yury Merzlyakov, the Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, praised
the group’s active role in settling the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

"The way the process is going on, including meetings between the
presidents and the foreign ministers, means that the Minsk Group
is acting properly and that the conflicting parties – Armenia
and Azerbaijan – have constructive attitudes toward each other,"
Merzlyakov told journalists.

Baku lost control over Nagorno-Karabakh and several districts adjacent
to it in a bloody conflict between Azeris and Armenians in the
1990s. The conflict rendered about 1 million Azeris refugees. The UN
Security Council condemned the occupation of Azerbaijan’s territories
by Armenia and demanded that Armenian troops be withdrawn from them.

A negotiating process to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh problem is
currently underway with international mediation of the OSCE Minsk
Group, which is comprised of representatives from the U.S., Russia,
and France.