The Karabakh issue will be discussed in Dubrovnik

Informed Head of the Armenian delegation to the OSCE PA Aram Safaryan

– They say that on October 8 during the autumn session of the OSCE PA in Dubrovnik, they are supposed to discuss the Karabakh conflict settlement progress.
– Your information is correct – on Monday I received a letter of President of the OSCE PA Petros Efthymiou, which was written also by Honorary President of the OSCE PA, rapporteur on South Caucasus, including the Karabakh conflict settlement João Soares, reading that they were engaged in negotiations with the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs (the co-chairs of the USA and RF agreed), considering the preliminary agreements in Belgrade, to participate in the autumn session in Dubrovnik this September. Mr. Efthymiou offered to dedicate one meeting on October 8 to the Karabakh conflict settlement progress in his letter addressing me as the head of the Armenian delegation and Bahar Muradova, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly of Azerbaijan. During the discussion we will listen to two co-chairs, Russian and American, of the OSCE Minsk Group and Ambassador Andrzej Kasprzyk who has also been the Head of the OSCE Field Mission for many years, afterwards they will give the floor to me and Mrs. Muradova for around 12 minutes to represent the current state of negotiations.
– Has another meeting like this taken place in the OSCE PA in the previous years, if I remember correctly, such thing happened only once?
– Yes, once, as early as in 2005 when OSCE PA former rapporteur, former honorary president, Swede Göran Lennmarker put forward his “golden opportunity” (package of proposals). After that no such discussion took place in the Parliamentary Assembly.
– Only the Russian and American co-chairs are mentioned, as participants in this discussion, in the letter you mentioned. Why isn’t the French co-chair mentioned, are there disagreements with the representative of this country?
– I can make only one suggestion – maybe the timetable was not comfortable for the French co-chair to participate in the discussion in Dubrovnik; this is my personal opinion. As is known, all three Minsk Group co-chairs work by the principle of consensus and in concord, permanently in contact with the OSCE operational structures. I assume that Mr. Popov, the Russian representative and Mr. Bradtke, the American representative will speak on behalf of the whole group.
– Don’t you think that the discussion must be properly covered by the media?
– I agree, since I myself have been always surprised – every time the Azerbaijani delegation appears in a certain place, the mass media representatives of that country come and gather in that place with their recorders and cameras and one is always under impression that their delegates run themselves ragged. And we call you at most or you call us and we give you information. This is a serious issue and I think this is not only the money issue anymore, because if the international community really wants to make the negotiation process active again and has serious, practical expectations, then we have to show adequate attitude to that in our country, including our activity in the information sphere.