U.S. will do everything possible to support progress made by Nagorno-Karabakh conflict sides in Sochi

The U.S. has already done much to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and will do everything to support the progress made by the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict sides in Sochi, the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, said in an interview with Trend on Friday.

"Before leaving Washington to come to Baku, I had a chance to discuss the Minsk group process in the context of all over bilateral relationship with President Obama and Secretary Clinton, said Bryza. - I witnessed that Washington seeks to do all that is needed to help the sides reach an agreement."

He said the U.S. shares interest in the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Bryza said an important achievement is the statement made by the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, saying again that there is a commitment to peaceful settlement, all incidents along the line of contacts need to be investigated through the OSCE. It is important that they agreed about exchange of prisoners, what happened just yesterday, he said.

Azerbaijan has transferred Armenian citizen Arthur Badalian to Armenia at 2 pm in the Agdam region on Thursday. In turn, soldier Anar Hajiyev was transferred to the Azerbaijani side, Baku office of the International Committee of the Red Cross told Trend. According to the Geneva Conventions, the ICRC has been working in Azerbaijan and Armenia since 1992 in connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

After the talks on March 5 the presidents of Azerbaijan, Russia and Armenia made a joint statement on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. The document said that the leaders discussed the issues of practical implementation of the tripartite statement adopted by them during the last meeting in Astrakhan on October 27, 2010. In particular, the Presidents agreed to complete exchanging of prisoners of war as soon as possible.

The document stresses the desire to resolve all disputed issues by peaceful means and to investigate possible incidents along the ceasefire line, with the participation of the parties under the aegis of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen with the assistance of the Special Representative of the OSCE Chairman.

The position of President Medvedev has been very constructive and as the cochairmen say, there was the progress in Sochi, the ambassador said.

"The U.S., in turn, will do its utmost to support this progress," he said.

"As co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group, we consider our duty to do everything possible to help the conflicting sides to implement a peace agreement reached in Sochi," Bryza said.

The ambassador said the OSCE co-chairmen are doing very important work.

"I am an ambassador now and my job now is to do everything what I can to support and help my friend and colleague and finest diplomat ambassador Robert Bradtke and OSCE MG.


/Trend/