BY ARA KHACHATOURIAN Last week at the Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearings, President Obama’s nominee for the US Ambassadorial post in Azerbaijan, Matthew Bryza, assured senators that he would be impartial if confirmed to the top US post in Baku and always serve US interests as the job calls for. The Azeri elite and the [...]

By Victoria Vardanyan Yerevan, July 15– “Azerbaijan will never grant Karabakh a status that would separate this region from our country,” said Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev. Regarding the Nagorno Karabakh peace negotiation process, the leader of Azerbaijan once again enumerated the requirements that official Baku puts forward for a settlement. “Territorial integrity of Azerbaijan must [...]

YEREVAN, July 5–US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Armenia and Azerbaijan to finalize a framework agreement to resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict as she visited the two South Caucasus states on Sunday. Clinton spoke of “promising” signs in the protracted peace process after holding talks with President Serzh Sarkisian in Yerevan, where she arrived from [...]

YEREVAN (RFE/RL), June 25–President Serge Sarkisian and Defense Minister Seyran Ohanian paid apparently urgent visits to Nagorno Karabakh on Thursday almost one week after deadly fighting on the Armenian-Azerbaijani Line of Contact around the disputed territory. In a move that could fuel more talk of renewed war, Azerbaijan said, meanwhile, that it has conducted one [...]

YEREVAN (RFE/RL), June 23–Armenia’s leading political forces on Tuesday blamed Azerbaijan for the latest ceasefire violations in Nagorno-Karabakh and warned it against attempting to resolve the conflict by force. President Serge Sarkisian’s Republican Party (HHK) and the main opposition forces accused Baku of deliberately provoking the June 18-19 clash in Karabakh’s northeast that left four [...]

YEREVAN (RFE/RL), June 19–The presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan narrowed their differences on the existing international plan to end the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in fresh talks hosted by their Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev, the Kremlin said late on Thursday. Medvedev and Presidents Serzh Sarkisian and Ilham Aliyev met in the Russian city of Saint-Petersburg earlier in [...]

YEREVAN (RFE/RL), June 19–Armenia accused Azerbaijan on Saturday of “doing everything” to scuttle the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process after four Armenian soldiers were killed in the worst Armenian-Azerbaijani truce violation reported in more than two years. Citing the Karabakh Armenian military, Armenia’s Defense Ministry said the fighting occurred in the northeast of Karabakh overnight. It said [...]