Germany’s Fischer urges Armenia, Azerbaijan to settle Karabakh fight

Deutsche Presse-Agentur
April 22, 2004, Thursday

YEREVAN

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer on Thursday stepped up
international pressure on Armenia and Azerbaijan to resolve the
long-running conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

Only with a genuine settlement could the Caucasus region as a whole
become stable, Fischer told Armenian President Robert Kocharyan in
Yerevan during a tour of the former Soviet Caucasus republics.

Germany and the European Union would assist the process, he said,
adding that “The main role, however, lies with the conflicting
sides”.

A shaky ceasefire has held in the ethnic Armenian enclave within
Azerbaijan since 1994, after upward of 25,000 people died in fighting
and a million were displaced.

The German minister also visited a memorial to the estimated 1.5
million Armenians who died during repressions by Turkish forces in
1915. Armenia has for years sought to have their deaths
internationally recognized as genocide.

Fischer visited Azerbaijan on Wednesday and was due to travel to
neighbouring Georgia later Thursday. dpa na cu

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Emil Lazarian

“I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS