June 14, 2001 - 00:24 AMT
VARDAN OSKANIAN CONFIRMED THE DEVOTION OF ARMENIA TO "THE PARISIAN PRINCIPLES"
. Today, at a press conference Foreign Minister of Armenia Vardan Oskanian has again confirmed that Armenia is prepared to continue the negotiation process on the Karabakh conflict on basis of "the Parisian principles". According to the Minister's words, serious progress has been really achieved during the talks in Paris and Key West, and this was encouraging. But after the last visit of the co-chairmen of the Minsk group to the region, evidently the mediators met new problems, understood rather as proceeding from Azerbaijan. As a result the Geneva meeting, which had been planned in the beginning of June, was delayed for an indeterminate period of time. The mediators explained the slippage of the next stage of the negotiations as caused by unavailability of the Armenian and Azerbaijanian societies to accept the proposals of the Minsk group. The Minister pointed up that neither Armenia, nor Karabakh addressed a request to the co-chairmen to delay the meeting. This lets assume that the problems appeared namely in Baku. Vardan Oskanian stated that the negotiations had not been broken off. He hoped that the mediators would be able to bring the negotiations back to the process initiated in Paris.