France is waiting for response from Armenia and Azerbaijan
France expects that all conditions for arranging a meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents will be considered and the sides will implement the voiced proposals, French Ambassador to Armenia Henri Reynaud said during Friday’s press conference on the occasion of Bastille Day. "France expects all the necessary conditions to be summed up for the proposal to be implemented. After the sides state their willingness to meet, France will ensure all the conditions for implementing its proposal," he said. French President Francois Hollande was the first to speak about the meeting of the two presidents. During his official visit to Armenia on May 12-13, Francois Hollande proposed that his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts meet in France and resume negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh. Henri Reynaud says everything depends on the will of the conflicting parties. “As soon as the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan express desire to meet, France will do everything possible to organize the meeting,” he said. The French Ambassador refrained from commenting on the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group U.S. Co-Chair James Warlick that the ‘occupied territories around Nagorno-Karabakh should be returned to Azerbaijan.’ Henri Reynaud noted that the process of talks should be based on the principle of confidentiality to ensure effectiveness. “As an Ambassador of France – a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group - I am withholding comments on the issue,” he said. Mr Reynaud also said that considering the tensions on the Line of Contact between the armed forces of Azerbaijan and Karabakh, France, as OSCE MG co-chairing country, is calling on the sides to refrain from the use of force or threat of force. “I feel that both sides want to reach a peaceful settlement of the conflict as there can be no other alternative to a peaceful settlement.”
