U.S. State Department declines comment on dissolution of Nagorno-Karabakh
YEREVAN, September 29. /ARKA/. Spokesman for U.S. State Department Mathew Miller refused to comment on Nagorno-Karabakh president's statement on the dissolution of the breakaway republic from January 1, 2024, but answered questions about USAID’s efforts to help Armenian refugees fleeing their homes.
“Ambassador Samantha Power (Administrator of USAID) announced yesterday (September 27) that USAID had deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team in the South Caucasus to coordinate the U.S. humanitarian response. That team will assess the situation and identify priority needs to scale up assistance and work with partners to provide urgently needed aid,’ Miller said at a press briefing.
Miller said the U.S. is quite serious about the international mission. ‘We think the international mission is important because it relates to all of the other questions about humanitarian assistance, about humanitarian needs in the region. We are so serious about the international mission that the Secretary raised it in his call with the president of Azerbaijan pressed him to support an international mission. You may have seen that the Azerbaijani government came out yesterday and said that they do support an international mission, and in fact in their statement said one of the reasons they are supporting it is because they have been pushed to support it by the United States.’
In a comment on a statement by Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry that urged Armenians of Karabakh to become part of the multiethnic Azerbaijani society Miller said,’ I will say that we continue to be greatly concerned about the humanitarian situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. We think it’s important that residents of Nagorno-Karabakh be able to make the decision to leave if they want to leave and to be able to return if they want to return. It’s a decision that they all have to make as individuals, but we think it’s important that they be able to make that decision for themselves. And we think there ought to be unhindered humanitarian access to the region to make sure that populations in need can get the support that they require.’-0-
