U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State: "Yerevan, Baku should set Karabakh settlement time"

He said the United States was ready to do its best for the soonest Karabakh settlement, Itar-Tass reports.

He disagreed with the opinion that the recent meeting between the Armenian and Azerbaijani presidents in the Paris suburb of Rambouillet was a failure. The sides were close to an intermediate agreement in Rambouillet, and their inability to do that does not mean that the process is in a deadlock, the diplomat said. He said that final steps are always very difficult and require determination of the leaders.

Normalization between Armenia and Turkey will become a necessary and natural consequence of the Karabakh settlement agreement, the official said. He said that normalization of the Armenian-Turkish relations was discussed at every meeting of American administration members in Yerevan and Ankara.

Bryza said that his Tuesday meeting with Armenian President Robert Kocharyan was very constructive.