A political advisor to Karabakh president Arkady Ghukassyan says he sees a “new situation” evolving in efforts to strike a peace agreement with Azerbaijan.

Speaking at a seminar in Yerevan Manvel Sargsyan said: “It is not accurate to talk about the conflict the way it was talked about a year ago.”

Sargsyan said that while the Minsk Group has been successful in enforcing the 10-year cease fire between Azerbaijan and Karabakh, its negotiating efforts have stagnated. The Minsk Group, the advisor said “has expired”.

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The United States Ambassador to Armenia John Ordway officially refuted reports that the US Co-Chairs of the Organization for the Security and Cooperation (OSCE) Minsk Group had put forward a new plan for settlement of the Karabakh conflict.

During a meeting with Armenian journalists Thursday the US Ambassador said the OSCE co-chairs have not made any specific proposals in the most recent round table discussions.

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The United Nations has chosen Armenia as host for its UNAIDS regional joint project center for fighting AIDS. The Yerevan office, set up this spring, will coordinate a Caucasus-wide program.

“Establishment of this regional center is very important considering conditions throughout the world today of record high HIV/AIDS, especially in cases where there is a great migration flow in the whole CIS territory,” says the press secretary of the Republican AIDS Prevention Center Susanna Tokmajyan.

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