During his interview to the “AzerTaj” news agency, Matthew Bryza, Assistant to the US Under-Secretary of State and Head of the Minsk Group, also spoke about the US State Department report regarding the formulation on Karabakh, which caused a lot of complaints among Azerbaijanis.
“The statement found in the previous version of the US State Department report was incorrect. Taking into consideration the current phase of the Karabakh peace talks, it was our mistake,” Bryza said. “Now we are in a phase when the parties are conducting talks over the future status of NKR. We cannot predict the outcome of the talks regarding the status,” he said. In the meantime, Mr. Bryza added that, “We have admitted and corrected our mistake.” He has also confirmed that “We were not influenced by anyone.” “Some people say we did that under the pressure of some Diaspora groups. This is not true.” Amendments are seldom introduced to the State Department reports, Mr. Bryza mentioned, “But at the present moment we are in an exclusive phase of the Karabakh peace talks,” he said. The reference was dropped from the report’s chapter on human rights in Armenia last week following strong protests from official Yerevan and Armenian lobby groups in the United States. Its revised version stopped short of describing Karabakh as an internationally recognized part of Azerbaijan. The significant change in the report’s wording was condemned by Azerbaijan, which cancelled on Sunday a planned visit to Washington by a high-level government delegation. The move prompted U.S. officials to reassure Baku that Washington recognizes Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity in regards to the Karabakh conflict. The State Department denied on Thursday that it restored the controversial passage under Azerbaijani pressure. “We didn’t do anything under pressure,” an official at the department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs told RFE/RL from Washington. “We were trying to correct some unclear language that led to confusion about our policy. We’ve determined that our policy has not changed and that we need to stand by the original human rights report.” Predictably, Armenian reaction to the development was diametrically opposite. “We thought the mistake in the report’s original version was corrected and are bewildered by such an unserious approach to the matter,” Vladimir Karapetyan, a spokesman for the Armenian Foreign Ministry, said. The latter said Yerevan hopes that the State Department will again revise the report, arguing that U.S. diplomats said they had “recognized their mistake” during talks with Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian and other Armenian officials. He also pointed to comments made by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Bryza in an interview with the Azerbaijani Azertaj news agency on April 26. “We have admitted and corrected our mistake,” Bryza was quoted as saying. “We can not predetermine the outcome of negotiations on Nagorno-Karabakh’s status.” So what do we have now? The citizen reads the report on Human Rights, which says, “Armenia keeps occupying the territories of Azerbaijan – NKR and 7 adjacent regions.” Then from the same report he or she gets the information that the Armenian statesmen deny the statement. Then they find out from media that Bryza said, “You know, Oskanian was right. The State Department made a mistake but now it’s corrected.” And then the interested citizen understands that Bryza thinks he or she is a famous burden-carrying animal.