CLINTON BRIEFED ON LATEST ARMENIAN-AZERI SUMMIT
By Emil Danielyan
Karabakh | 06.02.12 | 14:12
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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was briefed on the results
of the latest Armenian-Azerbaijani summit in Russia during separate
talks with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Foreign
Minister Edward Nalbandyan held over the weekend.
Clinton met with the two men on the sidelines of an annual conference
on global security that took place in Munich, Germany. She made no
public statements after those meetings.
In a short statement, Aliyev’s press office said the Azerbaijani leader
and the chief U.S. diplomat had a “broad exchange of opinions on the
settlement of the Armenian-Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.” It
did not elaborate.
The Armenian Foreign Ministry said Nalbandyan and Clinton “discussed
in detail the latest developments in the negotiating process of
the Karabakh settlement” and, in particular, Aliyev’s January 23
meeting with President Serzh Sargsyan that was hosted by their Russian
counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in the Russian city of Sochi. Nalbandyan
shared her with the details of the summit, a ministry statement said.
A senior U.S. State Department official told U.S. journalists ahead of
the Munich Security Conference that the Karabakh issue is “something
the Secretary takes a personal interest in.” “The Secretary wants
to talk to both sides about the results of that [summit] and the
follow-on from that and how we can help move the process forward,”
the official said.
In joint statement with Medvedev issued after the Sochi talks, Aliyev
and Sargsyan did not announce progress towards an Armenian-Azerbaijani
agreement on the Basic Principles of the conflict’s resolution
jointly drafted by the United States, Russia and France. They only
“expressed readiness to accelerate the achievement” of such a framework
peace deal.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there is still “a whole
series of issues that remain to be agreed” by the conflicting parties.
This was a further indication that a breakthrough in the long-running
talks is unlikely in the coming months.
The Sochi statement insisted that the nearly one dozen Aliyev-Sargsyan
meetings organized by Medvedev since late 2008 have brought the parties
closer to peace. Both the U.S. and France have also repeatedly welcomed
the outgoing Russian president’s mediating efforts that have enhanced
Moscow’s role in the peace process.
According to the Armenian Foreign Ministry statement, Nalbandyan
stressed the importance of the U.S. involvement in the process. The
statement also quoted Clinton as saying that Washington will continue
to lend “full support” to the conflict’s resolution by “in a solely
peaceful way.”
Both Baku and Yerevan say that the existing peace proposals by the
U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group are largely
in tune with their positions. At the same time senior Azerbaijani
officials regularly criticize the mediating powers.
Ali Ahmedov, executive secretary of Aliyev’s Yeni Azerbaycan party,
demanded “significant changes” in the Minsk Group’s activities the
day after the Sochi summit. The Trend news agency quoted Ahmedov
as saying that Baku could seek “a new format” for the negotiating
process if the group’s three co-chairs fail to take “serious steps
to resolve the conflict within a short period.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
