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Azeri Official Sees 'Positive' Change In U.S. Stance On Karabakh

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  • Azeri Official Sees 'Positive' Change In U.S. Stance On Karabakh

    AZERI OFFICIAL SEES 'POSITIVE' CHANGE IN U.S. STANCE ON KARABAKH
    By Emil Danielyan

    Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
    May 1 2006

    The United Sates will be more sympathetic to Azerbaijan's position on
    the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict after Friday's negotiations in Washington
    between Presidents George W. Bush and Ilham Aliev, a senior aide to
    the Azerbaijani leader said over the weekend.

    "The U.S. president followed the [Karabakh] issue very attentively
    and inquired about it," Novruz Mammadov, head of the foreign affairs
    department in Aliev's administration, told Azad Azarbaycan television,
    commenting on the talks. "I think that following the meeting, we
    will observe certain changes in the U.S. position on the peace talks,
    that's to say positive steps to resolve the conflict."

    Mammadov did not specify what those changes will be, saying only
    that Washington "will from now on provide Azerbaijan with strategic
    support in all areas."

    Bush and Aliev made scant reference to the Karabakh conflict as
    they briefly spoke with reporters following their talks at the
    White House. The U.S. president mentioned it in passing, saying that
    "relations with Armenia" were on the agenda of the "candid discussion"
    along with issues such as Iran's controversial nuclear program and
    oil-rich Azerbaijan's "very important role" in energy security.

    Aliev, for his part, said he briefed Bush on "the latest status of
    the negotiations and expressed my hope that a peaceful settlement of
    the conflict will happen and will serve to the peace and stability
    in the whole region."

    It is thus not clear if the two leaders reached any agreements on
    U.S.-led international efforts to get the conflicting parties to cut
    a framework peace deal on Karabakh before the end of this year. The
    U.S., Russian and French mediators co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group
    hope that Aliev and Armenian President Robert Kocharian will again
    meet early this summer and try to achieve a breakthrough.

    In separate comments made outside the White House, Aliev reiterated
    that Azerbaijan will not compromise on its territorial integrity
    for the sake of Karabakh peace. Other top Azerbaijani officials
    have complained recently that the mediators are not pushing for
    restoration of Azerbaijani control over Karabakh. "America should
    understand ... that the Azerbaijani state will not only disagree
    with a partition of the lands, but also prevent it," Deputy Foreign
    Minister Araz Azimov said last month.

    The Minsk Group's most recent peace plan, discussed by Aliev and
    Kocharian in France last February, reportedly calls for the holding
    of a referendum in Karabakh that would almost certainly legitimize its
    secession from Azerbaijan. The peace formula seems largely acceptable
    to Yerevan. But Karabakh's ethnic Armenian leadership has expressed
    serious misgivings about the idea.

    Armenia's Foreign Minister appeared to have tried to placate the
    Karabakh Armenians during a two-day visit to Stepanakert late last
    week. "I do not know what the political status of the Nagorno-Karabakh
    Republic will be like, but I know for sure what it will not be
    like. That is, Nagorno-Karabakh will never be part of Azerbaijan,"
    Oskanian declared at a meeting with students of Karabakh State
    University on Friday.
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