US Hopes for Agreement between Kocharian and Aliyev in Romania

PanARMENIAN.Net - The hope would be that the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia might at that point be able to come to closure on some of the issues that divide them within the context of settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict, stated Sean McCormack, an official of the US Department of State. He was commenting on the result of the visit of US Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried to the South Caucasus. "Fried was to the South Caucasus working with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs, Russia as well as France, to see if we could find a way forward on resolving the Nagorno Karabakh issue between Armenia and Azerbaijan," Sean McCormack said. "I don't have a readout for you as to what sort of progress they may have made," he added.



«I know that the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia are scheduled to get together in Bucharest, Romania, in early June. They made a run at it while they were in France. They weren't able to come to agreement," the US official stressed. "We, working with the Minsk Group co-chairs, are hopeful that they can come together to resolve whatever differences there are. These are tough issues, we know. It's going to require tough political decisions on both sides. But we think that at the end of the day, taking this tough political decisions will benefit all the peoples of the region," McCormack concluded.