US State Department has released a transcript of the briefing of two American diplomats where the names of senior officials of the State Department are not mentioned, they responded the reporters’ questions and voiced their observations regarding the Sargsyan-Aliyev meeting held in Vienna on May 16. The briefing addressed the issue of observers, in particular, the State Department official said that the current six observers do not solve major issues, and it is necessary to add their number, as well as to introduce mechanisms to investigate the ceasefire violations and incidents on the border. The American diplomat stressed that Azerbaijan is against these measurements, the goal of the Vienna talks was also to change the approach of Azerbaijan.
Aravot.am spoke to political analyst Yervand Bozoyan on this. “It is not worth us to immediately comment any such statement because usually we must distinguish between the important statements and the secondary. We all understand that this monitoring system, the establishment of control mechanisms, Azerbaijan actually accepted as for the information; Azerbaijan agreed that all that should be established but it will always accept on a condition that serious negotiation processes are resumed in June and specific project will be offered. It is conditioned by the fact that if this system is established without a specific project, it will actually mean that the status quo will be immortal. In other words, to have high expectations here that Azerbaijan can agree and the system could work actually, I do not believe,” said the political analyst.
Yervand Bozoyan noted that the mediators want to maintain impartiality because, in the case of making a positive step to one of the parties, the other party will begin complaining of the biased treatment and thus, the mediating mission will fail. According to him, this is the right position from the perspective of the mediators to the parties: in this case to Armenia and Azerbaijan, “Therefore, all parties: French, Russian and American, are always trying to come up with a statement not to leave an impression that they send more positive messages either to Armenia or Azerbaijan”.
Ami CHICHAKYAN
