“To be quite honest I should say that now I feel that we are moving to a new phase with a deeper, more detailed discussion of the remaining elements of the basic principles that need to be resolved,” the group’s U.S. co-chair, Matthew Bryza, told RFE/RL “At the end of the day, what we have to have is a mutual agreement on a settlement based on the three core Helsinki Final Act principles of territorial integrity, self-determination and non-use of force. During the past year the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan were getting accustomed to each others’ standpoints,” he said. The U.S. mediator says that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has entered a "new phase" after Armenian officials and fellow mediators from France and Russia discussed the issue in Yerevan. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Matthew Bryza told that "we need to capitalize" on the progress being made because there is "quite a bit of momentum" as discussions move to Stepanakert, the capital of the unrecognized breakaway republic, and Baku in the next week. Bryza, who is the U.S. co-chair of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group attempting to mediate a solution to the conflict, said Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev plan to meet on the sidelines of a May 7 European Union summit in Prague. Aliyev said in Russia on April 17 that he hopes the Karabakh conflict will be settled "rather quickly," and added that "questions that previously seemed hard to solve have been agreed" upon. Bryza has been engaged in shuttle diplomacy between Armenia and Azerbaijan for the past few weeks in an effort to gain an Armenian-Azerbaijani framework agreement. To the question of the Radio Liberty reporter on whether Bryza had brought any message for the Armenian government from Turkey since he visited Yerevan from Turkey Bryza said, “Of course the discussions were very efficient in Turkey and for me it became clear that Turkey is very serious to the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations. In Turkey there are clear visions of the development of the process. In the American point of view the Armenian-Turkish relations develop in a unique way. I work on the NKR conflict resolution and for me the Turkish-Armenian relations totally differ from the NKR conflict. And the recent statements of the Turkish premier Erdogan prove this fact but certain circles of Turkey claim the opposite. In my opinion the high-rank officials of Turkey are very much interested in opening a new page in the phase of Turkish-Armenian relations.” When speaking of certain allegations of the political circles of Armenia, according to which the OSCE Group co-chairmen are pressuring on Armenia regarding the NKR conflict resolution for the sake of the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations Bryza said, “My job is to provide a smooth process for the regulation of the NKR conflict and my efforts are focused on that.” And to the question whether the genocide issue or the NKR conflict resolution is a greater obstacle on the way of normalization of the Turkish-Armenian relations Bryza said, “These are separate questions. Both the Turkish and Armenian systems of Armenia need great courage to come to an agreement around those issues. I should say that they actively work on that.”
