After having visited Stepanakert the OSCE MG co-chairs (Fasier, Merzlyakov and Bryza) had a meeting with journalists in Yerevan and in fact didn’t say anything new.
According to the Russian co-chair, Youri Merzlyakov, they have had a very effective meeting with the president of Karabakh, Bako Sahakyan. To note, Matthew Bryza has spoken about the Karabakhi president with a positive context before that too, who said the following: “Bako Sahakyan made an impression of a person with constructive, creative ideas.” The Russian counterpart of Bryza added that when they met with Bako Sahakyan they got very interesting information, which they had to discuss.
Certainly, when speaking about Bako Sahakyan neither of the co-chairs used the term “president” to refer to Bako Sahakyan. Youri Merzlyakov also said that after their meetings with president Kocharyan and FM Vardan Oskanyan they had “positive impressions”, which created additional stimulus before their visit to Baku.
During the meeting with journalists the issue of changing the format of negations was in the focus of attention. It is worth mentioning that the existing president of OSCE, Miguel Angel Moratinos has said that in order to reach positive results there should be some changes made to the process of negotiations. The French co-chair, Bernard Fasier said that they didn’t know what Mr. Moratinos had meant. However, he believes that in the existing conditions the format of negotiations cannot be changed since the intermediary mission is carried out by the OSCE Minsk Group, and the negotiations are conducted by the USA, Russia and France. In parallel, it is not excluded that Karabakh may again become a participant of the negotiations in the nearest future. Fasier believes that the day will come and “the sooner it comes the better it will be.” Matthew Bryza continued his counterpart’s idea and said that Karabakh is participating in the process of negotiations now too as they are visiting Karabakh, having meetings there, listening to opinions, etc. Fasier added that they are periodically paying visits to “Stepanakert – Khankendi”. Answering to a question proposed by a journalist whether there had been an agreement to use the word “Khankendi” after Stepanakert the French co-chair said that he had used the word “Khankendi” purposely. “I will repeat, because repetition is the mother of learning,” said the co-chair and explained his idea with the example of Finland and Suomi (this is how the Finns call their country). As for the critical announcements on the part of Azerbaijan, the co-chairs think that such announcements don’t support the peaceful settlement of the conflict.
However, they have highlighted that their meetings in Karabakh and Armenia have inspired hope and they hope their meetings in Baku will be effective too.
According to Youri Merzlyakov, the number of unsettled issues is becoming less. “I don’t mean that we are close to the settlement of the conflict, but there is some improvement,” he said. Constructive, productive, optimistic…no more information. Such words have become the main terms they are using in their speeches. They don’t give any factual information. It means that before each of their meetings with journalists we may have prepared articles already about their interviews and ideas spoken. In addition, yesterday Merzlyakov petitioned, “not to ask details, otherwise they would not answer.”
P.S. Definitely the only news of the co-chairs’ visit was the fact that they have visited Stepanakert since not only the OSCE MG co-chairs, but the other European officials were refusing to visit Karabakh due to different reasons.