The U.S., Russian and French co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group spoke to journalists after holding talks in Yerevan with President Serzh Sarkisian and Foreign Minister Eduard Nalbandian. They already met the Armenian leaders at the start of their latest regional tour on Wednesday.
The mediators met with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliev in Baku later in the week. They were also due to visit Nagorno-Karabakh. According to Bernard Fassier, the group’s French co-chair, the trip was cancelled because of bad weather. The troika was only able to talk to Karabakh President Bako Sahakian by phone, he said.
“President [Ilham] Aliev and President [Serzh] Sarkisian have accepted our proposal to hold their next meeting in Prague on May 7,” announced Fassier. “We hope that the Prague meeting will be as constructive as the three previous meetings of the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents held in Saint-Petersburg, Moscow and Davos.”
The meeting will take place on the sidelines of a European Union summit to be held in the Czech capital. Fassier said the mediators hope that Aliev and Sarkisian will hold a follow-up discussion in Saint-Petersburg, Russia in early June.
Such a meeting was reportedly proposed by Russia. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev held separate informal talks with his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts earlier this month. Medvedev said last week that the conflicting parties are “ready to move in the constructive direction in order to solve this very difficult problem.” Aliev, for his part, expressed hope in Moscow that the Karabakh conflict will be settled “rather quickly.”
Like Sarkisian, Fassier and his U.S. colleague, Matthew Bryza, touted Aliev’s statements as encouraging. Bryza also echoed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary’s remark that Armenia and Azerbaijan could hammer out a framework peace accord “in the next months.”
“That is absolutely possible,” the U.S. diplomat said at the news conference. “But only God, the presidents or the two peoples will know for sure.”
Bryza also said that the dramatic thaw in Armenia’s relations with Turkey will reflect positively on the Karabakh peace process. “The positive mood that results from this signing [of a Turkish-Armenian statement] gives us new energy to accelerate our work to help resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” he said.
“We hope both processes will move forward, while separately, in parallel, although at different speeds,” added Bryza.