Washington, 22 October 1997 (RFE/RL) - U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says there are some hopeful signs in negotiations to settle a long-standing conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
She said yesterday in testimony before a U.S. Senate Committee that some progress has been achieved and that she discussed the issue in talks with Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov in New York last month.
Albright said Russia plays a positive role in the trilateral mediating group that also includes France and the United States.
She said Russia as well as the U.S. want to see a resolution and lasting peace settlement of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a breakaway Azerbaijani province populated largely by ethnic Armenians.
Albright said negotiations tend to go back and forth on the issue. But she said the current mediating process is more productive than the so called Minsk group of the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe that previously attempted to mediate a peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan.