YEREVAN. – I believe the Trump administration does not pay attention to the Karabakh conflict at the highest level. This happens because President Trump is attempting to reduce the US leadership’s role in the world, including through strict budget cuts at the State Department.

[But] ultimately, the [Trump] administration will probably accept that the talks through the [OSCE] Minsk Group on peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict ensure a specific plan, on which the US and Russia can work jointly for peace.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group former Co-Chair of the US, former US Ambassador to Azerbaijan, former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and Director of the Tallinn-based International Centre for Defence Studies, Matthew Bryza, told the aforesaid to 168 Zham (Hour) newspaper of Armenia.

As per Bryza, cutting down the position of the US Co-Chair of the Minsk Group is an unwise and even a perilous move, since this can create a vacuum, as a result of which the Minsk Group process could fail, whose consequence will be the spiral increase of tension [at the Karabakh conflict zone], whose peak could be another war.

Also, Bryza noted that this move [of making budget cuts at the State Department] is senseless from the budget point of view, since the OSCE, and not the US government, covers the costs of the US co-chair, wrote 168 Zham.