No progress in Karabakh talks, says Azerbaijani FM

Azerbaijan’s foreign minister has said last week’s meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia bore no progress in resolving a long-standing territorial dispute.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Serge Sarkisian met Friday in Moscow to discuss the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The mountainous region is a part of Azerbaijan that has been under the control of Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire ended six years of war. The international community does not recognize its unilateral independence. Turkey closed its border with Armenia in 1993 in support of Azerbaijan in the conflict.

Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov said late on Monday that Friday’s talks did not bring progress, reported the Associated Press. But he said a trilateral meeting Saturday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did raise hopes.

“We believe and feel that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is interested in achieving solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict on his initiative. We felt during the discussion of details at the Moscow meeting that he intended to reach any progress,” Azerbaijani Press Agency quoted him as saying.

‘Talks at worrisome point’

Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balaian called the meetings between Sarkisian and Aliyev “constructive.”

Meanwhile, a leading member of Armenia’s main opposition alliance said he saw “serious changes” in the current Karabakh peace process, which he said had reached “a very worrisome point.”

David Shahnazarian, a former national security chief and member of the Armenian National Congress, made his comments to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, or RFE/RL, while assessing a July 17 meeting in Moscow.

Shahnazarian described the so-called Madrid Principles, which were revealed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, as “alarming” and containing “no positive elements.”

He added that the Karabakh resolution process has gained a “new quality” and that some elements of it resembled the Dayton Accords, which ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995.

The international mediators in the Karabakh talks – Russia, France and the United States – issued a special statement at the G-8 summit of leading economies in Italy in early July, urging all sides to step up work on a compromise deal.

In recent remarks marking the most revealing announcement to date on the details of the peace process, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said the Armenian pullback from five territories was reflected in the mediators’ proposals and only after the complete withdrawal could there be discussion about the status of Karabakh.

He also said Nagorno-Karabakh would never be recognized as an independent country.

Source: Hurriyet
URL: www.hurriyetdailynews.com/n.php?n=no-progress-in-karabakh-talks-says-azerbaijan-fm-2009-07-21

Posted by admin July 2009

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