YEREVAN (Noyan Tapan)–Armenian President Kocharian said that CIS Executive Secretary Boris Berezovsky is not a mediator in the Karabakh settlement. At a news conference Tuesday–the president reported that Berezovsky’s visits to Yerevan and Baku June 20-21 were purely of fact-finding character. During his visit Berezovsky said that he is likely to visit Karabakh this month.
President Kocharian denied allegations that "provocative" statemen’s were made by Armenia in connection with the Karabakh conflict. Mentioning Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian’s news conference held last week–the president pointed out that special attention should be paid to the part of his speech which stresses the importance of restarting the negotiating process without any preliminary conditions.
Pointing out that mass media paid the most attention to the part of Oskanian’s speech which addressed the problem of Karabakh’s unification with Armenia–Kocharian said that Oskanian did not say anything new. A month ago–during his visit to Germany the minister underlined that Armenia has legal and historical grounds for raising the question of Karabakh’s independence or its unification with Armenia.
