YEREVAN (News.az)–The president of Kazakhstan may host a meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Kazakh capital Astana in May, the head of Armenia’s delegation to the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly told a press conference Monday.
Aram Safaryan was quoted by News.az as saying that the meeting, to be scheduled on the invitation of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, would focus on the Nagorno-Karabakh peace talks. Kazakhstan currently holds the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE, which has been mediating for a settlement of the conflict through its Minsk Group since the early 1990s.
“We held negotiations with [Kazakh Foreign Minister] Saudabayev in Yerevan and Vienna. Kazakhstan really thinks that it can be a positive and constructive resource for direct influence on the process,” Safaryan said. “It seems that the Kazakh president will invite the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan to Astana for talks.”
He said that the Kazakh initiative was being discussed but the dates were not yet known.
“We hope that Kazakhstan may have a positive influence on progress in the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations as our colleague in the Collective Security Treaty Organization, as a post-Soviet country with a similar history to Armenia and as a country that occupies the high post of OSCE chairman-in-office,” Safaryan said.
