AZERBAIJAN CRITICIZES RUSSIAN, OSCE HANDLING OF KARABAKH TALKS.

Commenting yesterday on the latest round of OSCE-mediated Karabakh talks, held last week in Stockholm, Azerbaijani foreign minister Hassan Hassanov rejected the draft political agreement on Karabakh settlement which was discussed there as "unbalanced" and "ignoring Azerbaijan’s national interests." The agreement was prepared by the Russian and Finnish cochairmen of the mediating group known as the OSCE’s Minsk Conference. The cochairmen "not up to the task entrusted to them by the OSCE," Hassanov concluded. Welcoming the reassignment of Russian president Boris Yeltsin’s envoy to the Karabakh talks, Vladimir Kazimirov, Hassanov accused him of deviating from Yeltsin’s stated view that Karabakh must form an integral part of Azerbaijan with ethnic minority autonomy for Karabakh Armenians. Hassanov expressed hope that Yeltsin’s reelection will cause Russian diplomacy and Kazimirov´s successor to adopt the president’s view on Karabakh. (Interfax, July 10; Noyan-Tapan, July 9)

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