Mediators Look Forward To Next Armenian-Azeri Summit

Friday 15, July 2005
Armenialiberty.org
By Emil Danielyan and Hrant Aleksanian in Stepanakert

International mediators ended Friday another round of shuttle diplomacy on a cautiously optimistic note, hinting that the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan could clear the final hurdle to a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict at a meeting next month.
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[...] the group’s American co-chair, Steven Mann, told a joint news conference in Yerevan. “We still have difficult issues before us, but I believe that objective conditions exist for that type of solution … before the end of the year.”
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Mann’s Russian counterpart, Yuri Merzlyakov, described the mediators’ meeting with Kocharian as “very open and substantive,” saying that it focused on the unspecified “key elements of the basis of the future settlement.” [...].
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Arkady Ghukasian, the president of [...] Nagorno-Karabakh republic, [...] who has been highly skeptical about Azerbaijan’s commitment to mutual compromise, had rare words of praise for official Baku which he said has adopted a “more constructive” stance and toned down its militant rhetoric.
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Note: Above are excerpts from the article. The full article appears here. Clarifications and comments by me are contained in {}. Deletions are marked by [...]. The bold emphasis is mine.