In November last year the Minsk Group Co-Chairs reported to this Council that the two sides in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict were poised to make a transition from negotiating to decision-making and that a historic breakthrough in the settlement of the conflict was possible in 2006, says the statement by the OSCE Minsk Group made in Vienna June 22. “During the past seven months, we intensified our mediation efforts and worked hard to achieve the agreement of both sides on basic principles for a settlement. We visited Baku and Yerevan three times together and several more times separately, organized two meetings of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Azerbaijan and two summits between Presidents Kocharian and Aliyev – first in Rambouillet in February and then in Bucharest in early June.
For the first time since 1997, when the current format of the Co-Chairmanship of the Minsk Group was established, a joint Mission of Representatives of the Co-Chair countries at the Deputy Foreign Minister level traveled to the region in May in order to make clear to the presidents of both countries that 2006 is the necessary window of opportunity for reaching an agreement on Nagorno- Karabakh. In fact, the delegation of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigoriy Karasin, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried, and high-ranking French diplomat Pierre Morel – representing French Political Director Stanislaus de Laboulaye – told the two Presidents that our three countries expected them to take advantage of this opportunity by reaching an agreement on core principles for a settlement at their Bucharest summit in early June.
Our deputy ministers told the two Presidents that an agreement on basic principles now, before the July G8 Summit in St. Petersburg, would secure broad international support and a high level of financial assistance for postconflict reconstruction and peacekeeping activities. We stressed – as always – the belief of our nations and, more widely, of the international community that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be resolved in no other way than a peaceful one. Moreover, we stressed that both leaders need to prepare their publics for peace and not for war,” the statement says.
