The foreign ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan met on Monday in the presence
of international mediators for a third time in as many months, but again left no
indications of an imminent breakthrough in the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict.
The day-long meeting again took place in the Czech capital Prague and was
attended by the French, Russian and U.S. co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group. It
was the first face-to-face encounter between Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian
and his Azerbaijani counterpart Elmar Mamedyarov since the envoys’ visit to the
zone of conflict last month.
“We are continuing what we began at our first meeting,” Oskanian told RFE/RL
during a lunchtime break in the talks. “Our main objective to create a common
basis upon which we could build during further negotiations.”
“We are working toward that objective and I can’t say we have achieved it,” he
added.
Asked whether the two sides have made any progress in the last few months, he
said: “It’s a bit early to speak of common approaches. But the dialogue is
useful.”
While touring Armenia, Azerbaijan and Karabakh in late July, the mediators
openly criticized the conflicting parties for their perceived intransigence. The
troika said bluntly that the onus is on them, not the Minsk Group, to push the
protracted peace process forward.
The co-chairs were earlier said to be working on a new peace plan that would try
to combine the so-called step-by-step strategy of conflict resolution preferred
by Azerbaijan with the Armenian side’s insistence on a package deal that would
settle all sticking points at once. They declined a comment on Monday.
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