'The US hopes for settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict within a short period of time'.
The statement came from Eric Rubin, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the European and Eurasian Affairs stated in Washington DC.
Speaking at the conference 'South Caucasus 20 Years After Independence', deputy assistant secretary said, 'we are doing everything we can now, to support the Minsk Group in helping and hoping move to actual peace talks in Nagorno-Karabakh after so many years'.
'We’re still working now to agree on basic principles, but the commitment is very strong and we believe the commitment is there from both Armenia and Azerbaijan and we’re hoping that this coming year will be a year of progress on that after several years of halting progress', he mentioned.
Rubin also added that, “this is not a success story in the sense that there is not a lot of progress toward peace talks and a settlement in 20 years”.
“But I also think it’s important to note that through international efforts, through the OSCE; Minsk Group; our engagement; the engagement of Russia, France, of other countries, we’ve also helped Armenia and Azerbaijan avoid outright conflict”.
Speaking about the Turkish-Armenian rapprochement, Mr. Rubin mentioned that, the US still believes this process and encourages both governments, but however, with elections obviously having concluded in Turkey and now getting under way in Armenia, as well as the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, are challenging.
Mr. Rubin also talked about Azerbaijan’s development, saying, on the economic side the development of independent pathways for energy exports has really changed the entire scene, certainly from political independence in 1991 to increasingly economic independence,” which leads to a significant increase in political independence – a remarkable rise in standard of living – again, very active engagement, support for the international effort in Afghanistan, for other international efforts, really playing a very important role globally in a way that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago”.
He said the dialog and cooperation between Azerbaijan and the US has always been productive and positive.
Answering the question about the recent news about the Azerbaijani journalist who apparently was murdered deputy assistant secretary reminded that the embassy in Baku issued a very clear statement.
'We don’t know the facts; we can’t say exactly why it happened. I don’t think it’s clear at this point. But it is the kind of thing that causes great concern', he added
'Azerbaijani government deserves credit for immediately calling for a special investigative group to look into the circumstances around the death of Mr. Tagi', he said adding the US and Azerbaijani government has a very good dialogue.
The deputy assistant secretary also mentioned that the US supports South Caucasus integration to the European neighborhood.
A two-day conference on “The South Caucasus 20 Years After Independence” was held in the US Capital. The Carnegie Endowment hosted the event that tries to examine the lessons learned from twenty years of independence and state-building in all South Caucasus countries and discuss the best paths of future development in the region.
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