{"id":69756,"date":"2011-02-24T10:36:01","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T06:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=69756"},"modified":"2011-02-25T10:17:09","modified_gmt":"2011-02-25T06:17:09","slug":"sargsyan-top-us-official-discuss-karabakh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/02\/24\/sargsyan-top-us-official-discuss-karabakh.html","title":{"rendered":"Sargsyan, Top US Official Discuss Karabakh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg met with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan late on Wednesday during a visit to Yerevan that apparently focused on the unresolved Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, RFE\/RL&#8217;s Armenian service (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.azatutyun.am\/content\/article\/2318795.html\"><span style=\"color: #000080;\"><strong>Azatutyun Radio<\/strong><\/span><\/a>) reports.<\/p>\n<p>Sargsyan\u2019s office said the two men \u201cexchanged thoughts on issues of regional security and the process of resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh problem.\u201d It gave no details of that discussion.<\/p>\n<p>The talks came ahead of a fresh meeting of the Armenian and Azerbaijan presidents which is expected to be hosted by Russia\u2019s President Dmitry Medvedev on March 5. Medvedev and Sargsyan will likely discuss preparations for the Armenian-Azerbaijani summit when they meet in the Russian city of St. Petersburg on Friday.<\/p>\n<p>The US, Russian and French diplomats co-chairing the OSCE Minsk Group called for \u201cdecisive action\u201d towards Karabakh peace after visiting Yerevan and Baku earlier this month. The mediators also urged the conflicting parties to \u201cshow restraint both on the ground and in their public statements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Both sides have continued to report deadly skirmishes between their forces deployed around Karabakh since then.<\/p>\n<p>The US national intelligence director, James Clapper, reportedly expressed concern about the ceasefire violations during congressional hearings in Washington last week. He warned of a further escalation of tensions along the heavily militarized frontline.<\/p>\n<p>Steinberg, who was accompanied by US Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon, arrived in Yerevan on the first leg of a tour of the three South Caucasus states as well as Bosnia and Albania.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey will meet with leaders to discuss bilateral issues and regional security,\u201d the US State Department said on Tuesday. \u201cThey will also engage civil society representatives and media in each country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to Sargsyan\u2019s office, Steinberg stressed the fact that this is his third visit to Armenia in two years. Furthermore, he said Sargsyan\u2019s recent talks in Munich with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and an April 2010 visit to Washington testify to the \u201cstrength of the ties between our countries.\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg met with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan late on Wednesday during a visit to Yerevan&#8230;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69709,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[22381,10665,11083,15700],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69756"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}