Mann informed that a meeting of the OSCE Minsk group co-chairs will take place on 24-25 October in Washington where it is planned to discuss results of the Kazan meetings of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia and draw an action plan for upcoming months. It is also expected that the OSCE acting chairman’s personal envoy on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Andzey Kasprshik will take part in the discussion.

Mann called the forthcoming meeting “traditional”, noting, that for today the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairmen do not experience lack of ideas and proposals.  “Approaches of Armenia and Azerbaijan to the negotiation process are very serious”, the Minsk Group co-chair underlined, noting that “positions of the sides are to be well analyzed”. 

As for the latest reports of the international Crisis Group (ICG) on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict Mann noted, “such documents may affect positively the process of settlement” of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. 

Washington’s position is that the main platform for the discussion of the ways to solve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict must remain the OSCE Minsk Group. However the initiatives of various international structures, like ICG in particular, are undoubtedly positive for the process.

At the end of the press conference the diplomat expressed his opinion on the involvement of community leaders of Nagorny Karabakh in the negotiation process, stating that “the issue depends only on the positions taken by the leadership of Azerbaijan and Armenia”.

Trend/EV