Yerevan, June 8 (CTK special correspondent) – Czech President Milos Zeman has offered his good offices to Armenia and Azerbaijan in the peace talks over Nagorno Karabakh that might be held in Prague, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan told journalists after their meeting yesterday.
Zeman said the proposal was initiated by the Czech Foreign Ministry. It offers the reopening of the negotiations that took place in Prague in the early 2000s.
In the past months, the tension over the province escalated again and armed clashes resumed. In early April, they claimed 110 lives.
The dispute over the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan Nagorno Karabakh has divided the two countries since the late 1980s.
Their war ended by a ceasefire in the mid-1990s, but no real peace has been achieved.
Zeman told journalists that Prague had already hosted similar talks between 2002 and 2005.
He recommended to the two countries that they take a lesson from the relations between France and Germany.
They waged many wars, but after the arrival of two personalities, Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle, they were able to establish cooperation.
Zeman said both Sargsyan and Azeri President Ilham Aliyev were strong personalities.
Later yesterday, Zeman told Czech journalists that he accepted and gladly met the Foreign Ministry’s request that he propose the reopening of the Prague talks between Yerevan and Baku.
The proposal must still be commented by Aliyev, he said.
“If both [presidents] are interested in resuming the talks on any level…, I think such an offer of good services, which we do not force upon anybody and which only seeks to resume the past tradition, is quite appropriate,” Zeman told CTK.
