Azerbaijan calls on USA to express fair stance on resettlement in Karabakh
Trend news agency
22 Oct 04
BAKU
Trend correspondent E. Huseynov: As a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk
Group, the USA should be more active in the peaceful settlement of the
Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry press
service has quoted Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov as
saying at a meeting with US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for
European and Eurasian Affairs Laura Kennedy in Baku.
Mammadyarov said that the USA should demonstrate a fair position on
the illegal resettlement of population on Azerbaijani territories
occupied by Armenia. Mammadyarov said that Azerbaijan attached major
importance to partnership with the USA. As an example of this
partnership, Mammadyarov cited the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan and the
Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum [oil and gas pipeline] projects. He hoped that
necessary efforts would be made to implement the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum
project to transport the Azerbaijani gas to European markets.
Kennedy said that she supported the expansion and intensification of
relations between the two countries. She said she wanted relations
between the USA and Azerbaijan, which is the USA’s strategic partner
and has been cooperating with her country in a number of spheres, to
be at a high level in the future as well. Saying that the USA supports
economic development projects in Azerbaijan and a peaceful settlement
to the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagornyy Karabakh conflict, Kennedy added
that the OSCE Minsk Group was very interested in the settlement of
this problem.
Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met Kennedy yesterday.