YEREVAN. - First President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan on Thursday met with the U.S. Ambassador to Armenia Richard Mills upon the latter’s initiative. During the talk which lasted for over an hour, the events which took place on the Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact in April, as well as the new situation resulting from its were discussed.

Ambassador Mills specifically noted that the peace in Nagorno-Karabakh is possible only through talks, as the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs mention. According to him, the co-chairing countries are working on forming a constructive dialogue between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders. The Co-Chairs have repeatedly noted that in order to ensure the wellbeing of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, as well as regional peace, stability and further prosperity, all the sides should show a political will to take such decisions which will create a climate of confidence. This will allow to move forward in the issue of conflict settlement through talks, Ambassador Mills noted. The adoption of such decisions isn’t easy, but it is heartening that the Armenian leadership has come up with a commitment to settle the conflict through talks.

Agreeing with the opinion of Ambassador Mills, Levon Ter-Petrosyan for his part stressed the necessity of introducing monitoring mechanisms along the Karabakh-Azerbaijani Line of Contact parallel with the resumption of talks. He explained this by the fact that the parity approach shown by the international community in regard to the assessment of the previous ceasefire violations which are continuously repeated, have not only failed to rule out new violations, but also partially encouraged Azerbaijan to unleash the large-scale April provocation, which resulted in hundreds of casualties on both sides.  

According to him, the implementation of the monitoring regime will give an opportunity to precisely point out to the party which violated the ceasefire in each specific case. In the ex-president’s words, this may play a restraining role for maintaining peace on the contact line and ensuring favorable climate for the talks.  

Deputy Chief of Political/Economic Section at U.S. Embassy, Ruben Harutunian, and Director of the Office of the First President of Armenia Avetis Avagyan also attended the meeting.