\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
By Ruzanna Stepanian<\/span><\/p>\n A senior U.S. official said late Friday that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could be resolved before the end of this year and that the likelihood of another Armenian-Azerbaijani war has decreased since the recent crisis in Georgia.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s possible,\u201d Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried told RFE\/RL when asked about chances of a breakthrough in the Karabakh peace process in the coming weeks. \u201cBut possible does not mean inevitable, and there are hard decisions that have to be made on both sides. If this conflict were easy to resolve, it would have been resolved already.\u201d<\/p>\n Fried argued that Armenia and Azerbaijan were already very close to cutting a peace deal when their presidents held U.S.-mediated talks on the Florida island of Key West in early 2001. The deal fell through in the following weeks.<\/p>\n Commenting on possible attempts by one of the conflicting parties to resolve the Karabakh dispute by force, he said: \u201cI think that danger, which always exists, has somewhat receded because the war in Georgia reminded everyone in this region how terrible war is. There are some who are always tempted to talk in fiery language. But war is no joke. It\u2019s a bad option.\u201d<\/p>\n The U.S. diplomat spoke to RFE\/RL after holding talks in Yerevan with President Serzh Sarkisian, Prime Minister Tigran Sarkisian and representatives of Armenia\u2019s main opposition alliance. Efforts by the United States and other international mediators to help settle Karabakh conflict were high on the agenda of the talks.<\/p>\n Fried said he also urged the Armenian leaders to release opposition members that were arrested following the February presidential election on what the U.S. considers politically motivated charges. \u201cMy message was it\u2019s important to get past this and resolve it,\u201d he said. \u201cThe longer people remain detained, the longer there will be a cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n Fried said the Sarkisian administration should \u201cdeal with the consequences\u201d of Armenia\u2019s post-election unrest with the kind of \u201cgreat leadership and courage\u201d that it has shown in seeking to improve relations with Turkey. He also made the point that the democratization of Armenia\u2019s political system will be a \u201cslow process.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, Armenia has a great deal to do to build democracy,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s be realistic. This is going to be a slow, incremental process. It needs to go in the right direction and it needs to move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 By Ruzanna Stepanian A senior U.S. official said late Friday that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict could be resolved before the end of this year and that the likelihood of another Armenian-Azerbaijani war has decreased since the recent crisis in Georgia. \u201cIt\u2019s possible,\u201d Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried told RFE\/RL when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":783838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,41,34],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-5745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-armenia","category-azerbaijan","category-usa","tag-nagorno-karabakh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}