Matthew Bryza: US and personally John Kerry seek settlement of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

US Secretary of State John Kerry is committed to use all his powers to help mediate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the former US Assistant Secretary for the South Caucasus, former US ambassador to Azerbaijan, Director of the International Center for Defense Studies in Tallinn, Matthew Bryza, said.

Commenting the statement of the President's Aide for Public and Political Affairs, Ali Hasanov, that Kerry's words are contrary to the statements of the US president on the inadmissibility of the status quo, he pointed out that it is important to understand the entire quote of Secretary Kerry besides that one sentence. "Taken out of context, the quoted sentence understandably angered Mr. Gasanov, because it made the foreign minister of a co-chair country sound as if the United States, the world’s most powerful country, had lost interest in mediating the Nagorno Karabakh conflict," he explained.

"As Mr. Gasanov notes, it is the responsibility of the US Secretary of State to do everything possible to press for decisions that are politically difficult but essential to achieving a political settlement," Matthew Bryza noted.
 
At the same time he stressed that saying that, he knows from his own experience that Secretary Kerry was indeed personally committed to doing anything he and the US can to help the parties reach a political settlement of the conflict.

"Former colleagues of mine at the State Department often tell me of Mr. Kerry’s eagerness to apply his abundance of energy to help mediate the conflict. He would therefore be wiser to speak more of his proposals to achieve such success than talking about the political difficulty the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan face in driving the Minsk Group mediation process to a successful conclusion," he concluded.