Condoleezza Rice: Nagorno Karabakh Remains Major Obstacle to Regional Development

Asbarez quotes various news reports detailing comments made by the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a meeting with the Peace Corps. In particular, Rice raised concerns with the state of democracy in Armenia and Azerbaijan as well as calling the unresolved conflict between the two countries over Nagorno Karabakh as one of the major obstacles to development in the region.

“We have a lot to do in Azerbaijan and to some extent in Armenia so that these countries comply to some extent with those requirements which they once were committed to,” she said.

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“Because of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh political leaders resort sometimes to ‘bad’ moves and cite the conflict to justify them. I am telling them often that if the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is not resolved, these two states will be lagging behind their neighbors,” she said.

She also said the USA is not going to “export” democracy to the region’s countries.

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During the question and answer period, Rice, answering the question of Zoltan Sigetti, director of the Peace Corps on Azerbaijan, about the state of democratic development in the South Caucasus, announced: “The Caucasus, particularly the — not so much Georgia, but Azerbaijan, to a certain extent Armenia, there is important work to be done there to bring that part of the Caucasus closer to standards that we thought they were once meeting”.