Nagorno Karabakh resolution unlikely in immediate future, Rice says

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed doubt that the Nagorno Karabakh conflict can be solved soon, saying there are problems on both sides.



Rice spoke at a Capitol Hill hearing after two lawmakers expressed concern about the possibility of another war in the Caucasus region and asked why the Bush administration was seeking more military aid for Azerbaijan than Armenia.



"In the immediate future I don't know that Nagorno Karabakh can get solved," Rice said at the House appropriations subcommittee hearing on the State Department's budget.



"We have been close several times," Rice said. "And so we'll continue to try to work that. But I just have to emphasize, we have problems on both sides right now, and we're trying to make sure that both sides act responsibly."



Rice said a state of emergency in Armenia, imposed recently after rioting against the results of a presidential election, had made it necessary to suspend some U.S. programs there.



But Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, complained that the Bush administration had proposed several times as much U.S. aid in one category of military assistance to Azerbaijan as Armenia in the coming year, which he said broke a tradition of parity in assistance for the two countries.



"The Azeri government, in particular, President Aliyev, have been ratcheting up anti-Armenian rhetoric over the past few months in Nagorno Karabakh," said Schiff.



Michigan Republican Joe Knollenberg said he would favor discontinuing military aid to Azerbaijan. "I strongly believe that, instead of using this funding to help in the war in terror, they're gearing up for, as they say, a regional war," he said, Reuters reports.