The visitors held a conference with the republican top to blueprint measures the conflicting parties should take to pace up settlement. They called to enhance international involvement in the cause. The experts also reported their impressions of contacts with Karabakh authorities and NGO spokesmen.
Leading the delegation is Bruce Jackson, NATO committee head in the U.S. Senate, in charge of Project Transitional Democracies. The other delegates are Daniel Twining, director for foreign politics, German branch of the U.S.-based Marshall Foundation; Ronald Asmus, head expert of the Marshall Foundation trans-Atlantic relations board; Randy Scheuneman, Orion strategic center president; Istvan Gyarmati, Hungary, board chair of the Center for Euro-Atlantic Integration and Democracy; and Robert Cotrell, European branch editor of the UK-based journal, The Economist.
A truce was made on Karabakh more than ten years ago. Painstaking international mediation by the OSCE Minsk group has not brought settlement a step closer since that day. Occasional skirmishes are lately reported from the conflict zone day in, day out, the belligerents shifting the blame on each other.
Azeri authorities are willing to grant extensive autonomy to what they regard as a rebellious province, but are set on Azerbaijan retaining it for the sake of territorial integrity. Baku also insists on regaining long-established Azeri areas bordering on Karabakh and seized in the warfare, and on Azeri refugees returning home. The latter demand is a worthy reason for negotiations, agree Armenian and Karabakh leaders. They, however, would not listen about Karabakh ever getting back under the Azeri wing.
