U. S. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Mattew Bryza gave an interview to AZERTAC’s Washington-based correspondent about his last week trip to the region and Washington’s attitude towards recent developments in the South Caucasus. The following is the transcript of the interview.

AZERTAC correspondent: Mr. Bryza, the reason of our meeting today is to talk about recent developments in the region and your last week trip to Caucasus. These days, co-chairs are in Vienna with OSCE chairman-in-office to go over his trip to the region and review the latest troubling developments coming from Armenia and the cease-fire line. We understand, your office was also present there. Can you elaborate on what the co-chairs and OSCE make out of the current situation?

Mattew Bryza: Sure. The reason I’m not in Vienna is because the situation now is so serious that having just spent last week in the region talking to the leadership I decided to stay here and help my own government to take the right decisions on these very important issues. I did send the member of my team to Vienna on my behalf. In terms of cease-fire violations Ambassador Kasprjik and I together were in both Baku and Yerevan during those tense days. What we make of it is that we may never know who shot whom first. But we do know that a very serious exchange of fire involving all kinds of automatic weapons including rocket propel grenades, probably mortars happened. Tragically and unfortunately, four Azerbaijani soldiers lost their lives. Fortunately, the status quo seems to be reestablished. The generals and key military leadership have been in touch and they have hopefully reduced tension back to what is “normal” level, which is also very dangerous. As we saw just on Sunday two Azerbaijani civilians were shot apparently by snipers from the other side.

AZERTAC correspondent: You visited Baku and Yerevan last week. We followed your meetings closely, but because of the unprecedented censorship on local Armenian media within the framework of the emergency rule, the world doesn’t have a clear picture of what’s going on in the country right now. Can you talk about your Yerevan trip? What was the message that you took to the Armenian government? And some of the things you observed there?

Mattew Bryza: Yes. I’m glad you asked me that question. Because, I know that in Azerbaijan people are watching closely what our reaction is and they feel that, perhaps, we are more critical in other cases than in the case of Armenia. What we decided to do send me- the person who’s responsible for our relations with Armenia on day-to-day basis- to assess the situation, deliver our messages and try to redirect political dynamic back to democracy. That’s what I did. The message is that it’s crucial to restore all media freedoms, lift the state of emergency and begin the roundtable discussion of all political representatives to restore democratic momentum. Message was also that we absolutely deplored violence, no matter who initiated it; whether it was a government or opposition, who in some cases involved into violence. We called everyone in Armenia to respect the rule of law. We do think that the government of Armenia has a special responsibility to maintain peaceful and lawful ways without violence, wherever possible. We wished there had never needed to be an intervention by the government police on “Theater” Square. The government of Armenia made its decision. Unfortunately, the tension evolved into a very serious and, in fact, an unprecedented violence in the history of Armenian elections. That’s a tragedy. There’s time and space and opportunity to restore momentum. This is the most serious and negative post-election development anywhere in the South Caucasus since the end of the Soviet Union.

AZERTAC correspondent: Mr. Bryza, watching such a violent suppression of democratic freedoms in Armenia, my next question seems natural for lot of people in the region. Armenia has been and remains one of the largest recipients of US assistance, including one of the Millennium Challenge Account holders. A lot of money has been appropriated to that country for democracy building efforts. Compared to which Azerbaijan received dimes and nickels. But Washington has been very vocal in its criticism of the speed of democratic reforms in our country. In Georgia, following post-election confrontation, President Saakashvili resigned and got re-elected in order to address the Western criticism. Watching events unraveling in Armenia since presidential elections on Feb 19th, did it cross the minds over here whether that money was well spent?

Mattew Bryza: Absolutely. And, by the way, I was the person who had an honor to be sent by Secretary Rice to speak with President Saakashvili and other political leaders in Georgia. So, I am well aware of what our messages has been in each case. I think, we had appropriate messages in both cases. Yes, we are questioning the appropriateness of our assistance levels to Armenia under these circumstances. Just two days ago Ambassador John Danilovich who’s the chairman of the Millennium Challenge Corporation sent a letter warning president Kocharian that we have to review the appropriateness of Millennium Challenge program for Armenia, unless, we see the restoration of its democratic momentum. So, yes, we are reevaluating Millennium Challenge for Armenia. We are also reevaluating all of our assistance programs to Armenia. You always have to keep in mind in Azerbaijan that this is a thriving democracy in the United States. Based on our separation of powers, Congress is an equal branch of government that, in fact, is equal to the executive branch. It exerts its power to the expenditures of the budget. If the Congress decided it wants to provide a lot of assistance to any country in the world, often there’s very little executive branch can do to block that. So ,we have to work together as partners and co-equal branches of power. That is what we are involved right now: reassessing our assistance to Armenia. We’ll see where we come out.

AZERTAC correspondent: Secretary Rice speaking at the Congress hearings mentioned that Armenian events and imposed state of emergency there made it necessary to suspend some US programs in this country. Was she talking about MCC programs?

Mattew Bryza: She is the chairman of the board of Millennium Challenge Corporation, so she is totally familiar with everything. There are additional programs, the ones you mentioned, that were funded in high levels year after year. We have to reevaluate those levels of funding as well. So, I assume, she had everything in mind.

AZERTAC correspondent: Many in the region compare March 1st events in Yerevan with the brutal crackdown of protestors in Andijan in 2005. Uzbek government has faced a very harsh and proper reaction of the world community, whether Armenian government seems to get away with rather soft criticism. An opposition nominee in Armenian elections Mr. Ter-Petrosian in his recent article in Washington Post also talks about the shock experienced by the pro-democratic forces in Armenia watching the western reaction. People in Azerbaijan are not surprised, because President Kocharian and president-elect Sarkissian have practiced their violent methods on the innocent lives of the victims of Nagorno-Karabakh war a decade ago. There’s a strong feeling in the region about the double-standards shown to Armenian authorities. The credibility of the United States keeps being questioned. What is your response to that?

Mattew Bryza: My response would be that we are consistent and fair in expressing our views about setbacks for democracy. I would just encourage all of our friends in Azerbaijan to look at the Armenian government’s denunciation of me. Yesterday Foreign Ministry of Armenia denounced me, saying it was astonished by my sharp criticism of the violence, harsh actions against opposition demonstrators in Yerevan, which I made to the AP last Monday. So, the Armenian Government thinks we’ve been unfairly critical. I would guess that our colleagues and friends in Azerbaijan who feel there’s a double-standard simply unaware of what we’ve actually been saying. We’ve been quite critical. In any case, I don’t see any benefits of comparing what happened in Yerevan and Andijan. What we want now is for Armenia to move forward. There has been significant damage done to the democratic process in Armenia. It needs to be repaired. In Georgia, the damage was done last November and Georgia has repaired and is repairing that damage. We hope to see the same now in Armenia. We hope very soon we’ll see lifting of restrictions on media freedom and the state of emergency.

AZERTAC correspondent: Do you believe that there’s a connection between the political crisis in Armenia and the intensive cease-fire violation on the front line in Karabakh?

Mattew Bryza: I have no way to tell, because we really don’t know who fired first. We may never know that. It’s hard to tell. You can come up with all sorts of speculative justifications of why it makes sense for Armenia or Azerbaijan to shoot first or why it would never make sense for either country to shoot first. I really don’t know. What really matters is that we maintain the status quo, cease-fire violation stops and nobody uses it for political purpose.

AZERTAC correspondent: You expectations from tomorrow’s UN General Assembly vote on the resolution on the situation in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan. What will the position of your government be?

Mattew Bryza: I’d rather not disclose what our position is going to be. We are still involved into discussions with our colleagues in Azerbaijani government in Baku, Embassy here and Mission in New-York. Azerbaijan has a sovereign right to raise any issue of concern to it in the UN or any other international forum in which its member of. We hope, Azerbaijan chooses to give us more time to negotiate, but if it is still decides to move forward with the resolution, we hope that whatever draft will reflect the balance and what we think is a very fair proposal of Basic Principles that we’ve been negotiating with Azerbaijan and Armenia for the past couple of years. We would like to be supportive of any resolution that boosts the peace process. So, we hope that’s the draft that will be on the table.

AZERTAC correspondent: Thank you for talking to us.