• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Mediators See No Real Progress In Karabakh Talks

PARIS, 11 February 2006 (RFE/RL) -- International mediators at a summit between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to settle their 18-year-old dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh today said the talks brought no substantial progress.

Hours earlier, Robert Kocharian of Armenia and Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan left Rambouillet Castle, near Paris, without comment. The two South Caucasus leaders began direct discussions on 10 February after meeting separately with French President Jacques Chirac.

In a statement issued at the end of the summit, the co-chairs of the Minsk Group mandated by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to mediate in the talks said the discussions were "intensive," but provided no breakthrough.

The American co-chair, Ambassador Steven Mann, told RFE/RL after the summit: "The full range of issues were discussed. There were, I think, good personal atmospherics between the two presidents and the discussions did not result in a substantial change of the positions that the parties have held for months."

Mann said he and the other two Minsk Group co-chairs -- Bernard Fassier of France and Yury Merzlyakov of Russia -- will meet in Washington early next month to assess the outcome of the Rambouillet summit.

In the run-up to the talks, diplomats had expressed guarded optimism that progress could be made toward a framework for settling the Karabakh dispute, which has claimed at least 25,000 lives and driven more than a million people from their homes.

(RFE/RL's Armenian and Azerbaijani services)

Copyright (c) 2006. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org