Strobe Talbott: U.S. regularly briefed Turkey on Karabakh in the 90s

by Armenian Reporter staff

Published: Friday October 16, 2009

Former deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott and Ayatollah Mohammad-Ali Taskhiri of Iran.

Vladimir Yakunin, one of Russia's most influential political figures.

"Every time I was in Yerevan and Baku, and sometimes went to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Stepanakert, I would always make the effort, on the way in and on the way out, to stop in Ankara and meet with the leadership there," revealed Strobe Talbott, who was deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001 and co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates the Karabakh conflict.

Mr. Talbott made his comment during the Seventh Annual Session of the Rhodes Forum of the Dialogue of Civilizations, held from October 8 to 12 in Rhodes, in response to a question posed by Vardan Aloyan, general manager of CS Publishing House. (CS Publishing House and this newspaper are both affiliated with the Cafesjian Family Foundation.)

The Dialogue of Civilizations was founded by Vladimir Yakunin of Russia, Jagdish Kapur of India and Nicholas Papanicolaou of Greece and the United States. Mr. Yakunin, the founding president, is head of the state-run Russian Railways company and a member of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's inner circle.

Mr. Talbott's topic was "Barack Obama and the World." He said the dialogue of civilizations is the alternative to the clash of civilizations and argued that Mr. Obama is the leader of an emerging cosmopolitan world.

On Armenia and its neighbors, he said that Mr. Obama had placed the issue on his agenda and "taken a personal interest and has used personal diplomacy to try and improve relations between Turkey and Armenia." He added that the president "has quietly been effective in developing an atmosphere conducive to bilateral relations between Armenia and Turkey."

These efforts "will pay off for Europe also," and "improved relations between Armenia and Turkey will also help resolve the NKR issue," Mr. Talbott said.

The forum heard from Immanuel Wallerstein, the well-known world-systems theorist, and Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council, on a yearlong research project.

At the opening of the forum each year, a musician of international repute is invited to perform. This year's forum was opened by Djivan Gasparyan.

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