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Courage Needed For Settling The Karabakh Conflict

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  • Courage Needed For Settling The Karabakh Conflict

    COURAGE NEEDED FOR SETTLING THE KARABAKH CONFLICT

    A1+
    [04:20 pm] 17 May, 2006

    Two State Department officials said Tuesday they were optimistic
    about the possibility of a peace agreement between Azerbaijan and
    Armenia over the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabach. "The two
    sides are closer to an agreement than they have been in the past,"
    said Matthew Bryza, a State Department European affairs expert. He
    spoke to a meeting of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which
    was convened to examine humanitarian suffering in the region a dozen
    years after the war over Nagorno-Karabach ended.

    Bryza said the Armenian and Azerbaijani governments will have to show
    political courage to bridge the final gaps. "We look at these next
    couple of months as a real window of opportunity," he said.

    A second State Department official, David Appleton, said one sign
    of progress is that the Azeri government is asking the U.N. refugee
    agency to draw up plans for the return of the displaced to their
    homes once a peace agreement is signed.

    Baroness Caroline Cox, the British humanitarian and member of the
    House of Lords, who has visited Nagorno-Karabach 60 times, criticized
    the United Nations for refusing to provide relief to the people
    of the enclave under its policy of not doing work in "unrecognized
    territories." She said the policy deprives the suffering people of
    the region of much-needed aid.

    "U.N. organizations working in Azerbaijan have been very vocal on
    behalf of displaced Azeris but have been silent about Armenians
    suffering at least as severely," the baroness said. "This asymmetry
    is unjustifiable," she added. "The Karabach authorities have made
    repeated requests for help to the U.N. for assistance, but these have
    been unsuccessful."
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