U.S., July 6 / Trend , N.Bogdanova/
The United States hopes for quick progress in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Philip Gordon told Trend .
"In the next few days the Minsk Group co-chairs are going to be in the region, and we are looking for the results of the up-coming Aliyev-Sargsyan meeting to be positive," Gordon said. "I do hope that we can make progress very soon on it. It is important to us."
Co-Chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group will arrive in Baku on Thursday, July 9 for preparation for the next meeting between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan.
Azerbaijani and Armenian Presidents Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan intend to conduct next talks on Karabakh settlement in mid-July as part of a traditional race for president of the Russian Federation.
The last, fifth meeting on conflict resolution between the two leaders was held in St. Petersburg on June 4. The previous meeting was held in Prague on May 7. The first meeting was held in St. Petersburg in June 2008 and second meeting in Moscow in late November 2008 and third was held in Zurich on Jan. 28, 2009.
Gordon said the United States stand ready to help in any way that it can.
"I would be reluctant to put a timetable on when I think this problem would be resolved, but I do think there recently has been progress," he added.
The United States is certainly very much focused on it and engaged in it, Gordon said.
"There are some basic understandings of the basic principles that would be necessary to resolve this conflict, and I believe all of the parties would benefit if there were a resolution of the conflict," he said
Gordon believes 'any contact and dialog among the parties is a good thing, so the more of that the better".