Difficult stage in Karabakh conflict regulation process

24/01/2006

The next meeting of Ilham Aliev and Robert Kocharyan is going to take place in February in France. On Friday the ministers of Armenian and Azeri foreign affairs, Vardan Oskanyan and Elmar Mamediarov, met in the Russian Embassy building in London. “Now we have entered a difficult stage. Today’s meeting talks about this, because it was very hard today. In spite of the positive environment, there are still difficulties to be discussed”, said Vardan Oskanyan in his interview given to “Azatutyun” radio station. The president of France, Jacque Shirak has personally invited the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to meet in Paris. The place and time of the meeting are not clear yet, but according to Vardan Oskanyan the meeting will take place in February. “During the next couple of days we will be informed about the exact date and place of the meeting”, says Mr. Oskanyan. To the question regarding whether they discussed any issues regarding any concrete document, which could be a basement for the presidents later, Vardan Oskanyan answered: “It is not a secret, we have already said that there is a document on the table already, which consists of one page and includes 3-4 paragraphs, which contain the main principles of the Karabakh conflict solution. There is no detailed agreement draft yet, there is a document which contains the main principles, on which we hold discussions today. The document is short in its capacity, but it contains very important principles, which will be decisive for the future arrangements. And if the parties manage to come to a conclusion on these points in this document, it will be already easy to enlarge this document and make a detailed agreement”, said Mr. Oskanyan. As for the possibility to sign the document during the coming meeting of the presidents, Mr. Oskanyan said that this document is not a subject for signing. “These kinds of documents are called “non-paper” documents and are intended for working on, and as I said this document contains very laconic information about the main principles of the conflict regulation”, said Vardan Oskanyan.