YEREVAN (BBC/Interfax)–Armenian Foreign Minister Vartan Oskanian has described the continuing development of Armenian-Russian ties–even in the face of the Russian financial crisis–as one of the republic’s main foreign policy achievemen’s in 1998–the Russian news agency Interfax reported on Sunday.
"Even what was a hard time for Russia failed to exercise a negative effect on bilateral relations–which have produced positive practical results," Oskanian said. He praised the latest OSCE proposal for resolving the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh–describing it as the first proposal in six or seven years to "make no preliminary conditions and enable the parties to begin negotiations on equal terms."
Oskanian expressed regret at Azerbaijan’s rejection of this idea of a common state and said he hoped that in 1999 Baku would "revise its principles and accept this compromise document as the basis for negotiations."
