YEREVAN. - The EU Special Representative for the South Caucasus and the Crisis in Georgia, Ambassador Herbert Salber, hopes that the talks of the OSCE Minsk Group will lead to an agreement on a meeting between the leaders of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict parties.

Salber, who is currently on a visit to Baku, said the aforementioned in an exclusive interview with Trend.

“The EU respects very much that the Minsk Group is the lead,” he noted.

However, the Ambassador also added that the EU wants to be informed about the negotiation process regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement. “That’s why I am here… last week I was in Yerevan for the same purpose,” he said.

“I guess that messages that I get from the visit to the region first to Yerevan and now to Baku, are somehow giving hope that things are going on. If my impressions are right, something can be achieved. At the end of the day it has to be a compromise solution,” Salber noted.

In his words, EU has been promoting the ‘European Partnership for the Peaceful Settlement of the Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh (EPNK)’ program for years.

“We are now starting the first phase, which aims to bring people together, people on both sides of the contact line. We are ready to speak about living peacefully together, about prospects for achieving this,” Salber added.

According to him, the EU has allocated new budget for the EPNK and the Union has suggestions to implement projects focused on bringing people together. These projects should ideally start in late 2016.