ARMENIA: RUSSIAN MEDIATOR UPBEAT ABOUT KARABAKH SETTLEMENT

Mediamax
Nov 17 2008
Armenia

Yerevan, 17 November: The Russian co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group,
Yuri Merzlyakov, has said that the basic principles of the Karabakh
settlement proposed in Madrid "open additional opportunities for us
to act within the provisions of the Moscow Declaration signed by the
three presidents".

Merzlyakov made this comment on 15 November in Stepanakert. He said
that no one is going to artificially delay the process, and in the
nearest future, a meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijani foreign
ministers is expected to be held. "We hope that we will manage to
organize another meeting of the presidents as well," Merzlyakov
said. From their part, the French and the US co-chairs of OSCE Minsk
Group, Bernard Fassier, and Matthew Bryza, spoke for the necessity of
confidence building among the parties to the conflict step by step,
describing it as an important vector of their work. Commenting on
the meeting of the mediators with Nagornyy Karabakh republic [NKR]
president Bako Sahakyan, Merzlyakov described it as "very substantial
and constructive," saying that the NKR president "gave the most
positive assessment to the declaration signed in Moscow".