Clinton Meets Armenian CounterpartU.S. President Bill Clinton Tuesday met with his Armenian counterpart Robert Kocharian, discussing peace and economic reform in the Caucasus country.During the 35-minute meeting in the Oval Office in White House, Clinton pledged support for peace in the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a disputed enclave which is controlled by Armenia but located within Azerbaijan. After five years of cease-fire in the region, Armenia and Azerbaijan have so far failed to resolve their disputes over Nagorno-Karabakh which has cost several thousand lives and paralyzed the economic development in the region. "Our message to President Kocharian was that the United States will do its part along with the international community to support and implement a durable settlement,'' White House spokesman P.J. Crowley told reporters after the meeting. "We have an interest in seeing the region develop in terms of building prosperity but part of that comes with preventing or ending conflict," Crowley said. The United States is one of the three parties of the Minsk Group along with Russia and France, which was formed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to urge a peaceful resolution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. |
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