Yesterday the French co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group, Bernar Fasie, explained the current phase of the Karabagh conflict negotiations and said that before the Rambouillet negotiations we used to have a half-filled cup and during the Rambouillet negotiations the parties didn’t add anything and the cup was still half-filled.
“We wanted to fill the cup more, but we couldn’t. Anyway, the cup was not emptied either and the negotiations are still going on”, said the French diplomat. It is worth mentioning that in spite of the recent activation in the process of the conflict resolution, we still don’t have any positive results. It is also worth mentioning that the US is especially interested in filling up the cup, in particular the US co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group, Steven Mann. The proof of this is the fact that after his recent visit to the region he is planning to visit once more in the near future. Bernar Fasie also said that he could visit the region again either at the end of this month or in the beginning of the coming month. Russia seems not to be so active in this process. In spite of their other colleagues of the Minsk Group, France and the US, the Russian co-chairman, Youri Merzlyakov, hasn’t visited the region recently and hasn’t made any efforts “to support the parties agree on their approaches to the conflict resolution” (this is how the other chairmen explain their visits to the region). Youri Merzlyakov denies the rumors claiming that he is going to visit the region on his own soon. Merzlyakov also said that the visit of the RA foreign affairs minister to Russia in the period of April 5-7 and their meeting with him was positive. Recently Bernar Fasie said in Baku that very soon the foreign affairs ministers of Azerbaijan and Armenia would be given the new program draft of the Karabakh conflict resolution based on the “Prague processes”. He also said that Vardan Oskanyan had been introduced to that proposed program before his visit to Moscow, during his visit to Washington. The Russian co-chairman of the OSCE Minsk group said that Armenia was interested in that proposed draft of recommendations. “The new recommendation draft proposed by the USA, which has been presented by the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk group, concern the principles of the Karabakh conflict resolution”, said Merzlyakov yesterday. In regard to U.S.’s recent activation in the process of the conflict negotiations he said that there was no competition between the co-chair countries to visit the region anymore. However, it is expected that the co-chairmen of the OSCE Minsk group will visit Armenia in May and the purpose is to take certain actions “to fill the cup more”. As for this process of filling up the cup, Mr. Fasie said yesterday that they expected to organize that either in June or July.