(RFE/RL, AP) — Azerbaijan’s Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov has said that some progress is being made in OSCE-sponsored talks on resolving the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh.
Mammadyarov and his Armenian counterpart Vartan Oskanian held separate talks in London Friday with negotiators from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Speaking to RFE/RL afterward, Mammadyarov said he is cautiously optimistic that the talks, which are part of the so-called called the “Prague Process,” may eventually
yield results.
“There is some movement in the process, which is called the Prague Process,” he said. “We hope that the movement will [continue] steadily further and we agreed that the next meeting is going to be in Frankfurt, on the 27th of this month.”
“I would call the negotiations productive because they help to clarify positions in the sense that we have already agreed on the framework of the Prague process,” he added. “So what we need to do is to continue negotiations and try to bring the positions of the two countries closer to each other.”
Oskanian, for his part, declined a comment after meeting the French, Russian and U.S. co-chairs of the OSCE’s Minsk Group.
In a related development, Armenia reacted negatively to the co-chairs’ Friday statement, saying it didn’t take enough notice of cease-fire violations by Azerbaijan. Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamlet Gasparian on Saturday repeated his country’s assertions that Azerbaijan was responsible for continued violations along the enclave’s front lines. He said the statement should have done more to underscore that.
The OSCE report voiced concerns about growing tensions and cease-fire violations and called on all sides to refrain from inflammatory public statements.
“The noticeable caution by the co-chairmen (in the report) … will not promote the preservation of the cease-fire regime,” Gasparian said. “We expect that the co-chairmen and those interested in preserving stability in the region will take more decisive steps.”
Azerbaijan, which has not reacted publicly to the report, blames Armenia and Karabakh Armenians for stoking tensions.
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