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Bernard Fassier: The fact-finding mission that will visit the regions surrounding Nagorno Karabakh will first of all compare the situation in the past five years

05 October 2010 09:37 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. â€œThe line of contact should not remain as an everlasting iron curtain,â€ French co-chair of OSCE Minsk Group Bernard Fassier told journalists, APA reports. French co-chair also gave information about the fact-finding mission that will visit the territories surrounding Nagorno Karabakh.
â€œAfter holding official meetings in Baku and Yerevan we will visit Khankendi on October 7. From there we will determine the following visits of the mission to the regions. If everything is in line with the plan and weather conditions are favorable, we plan to complete our work by October 13. It is difficult to say in advance what the results of this mission will be. This is a very rare and important case. The first visit was paid in February, 2005. First of all we will compare that period and present situation,â€ he said.

Bernard Fassier explained the reason of their crossing to Nagorno Karabakh from the territory of Armenia.
â€œFor the last time we went to Nagorno Karabakh crossing the territory of Azerbaijan. We wanted to demonstrate that despite the difficulty of the process of negotiations, the line of contact should not remain as an everlasting iron curtain. We have not preserved the high tempo we achieved in 2009. I think being mediators we should use all these routes. While going to Karabakh directly from Baku we used the help of the experts. I hope we wonâ€™t have to wait for nine more years in order to cross the line of contact and go to Karabakh,â€ he said.

According to the French diplomat, it is still early to speak about the meeting of Azerbaijani and Armenian presidents within the framework of OSCEâ€™s Astana summit in December.