Azernews.Az

The reports posted by WikiLeaks, a website revealing secret documents, are personal views that do not reflect the US government’s official stance, the US ambassador to Azerbaijan has said.

"We have never accepted the WikiLeaks materials being the State Department’s official reports," Matthew Bryza told the press Wednesday. "In any case, I or other staff members [of diplomatic missions], express or offer exclusively our own views in the cables we send. These [the cables] are merely a diplomat’s account of what is going on. Just like other people, diplomats have the right to correspondence with their counterparts."

A recent WikiLeaks report, referring to the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over Nagorno Karabakh, quoted US Ambassador to Armenia Marie Yovanovitch as allegedly saying in a secret cable sent to the State Department that prior to the signing of Turkey-Armenia reconciliation agreements in 2009, Armenia agreed to negotiate a pullout of its armed forces from five Azerbaijani regions around Nagorno Karabakh.

According to the cable, former Armenian foreign minister Vardan Oskanyan has also said that President Serzh Sargsyan was ready to withdraw Armenian troops from the five Azerbaijani regions -- occupied along with two adjacent regions and Nagorno Karabakh since the 1990s war -- but backed down from this intention after the issue of Armenia-Turkey protocols came to the forefront.

Turkey and Armenia have been at odds for decades due to Armenia’s occupation of Azerbaijani territory and Armenian claims on 1915 "genocide" in the Ottoman Empire. The reconciliation agreements, signed by Ankara and Yerevan in Zurich in October 2009, require parliamentary approval. However, Turkey has assured Azerbaijan, its ally, that the protocols will not be ratified until progress is made in resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict. In response, Armenia suspended ratification of the protocols in April 2010.

The released cables enable a conclusion that US President Barack Obama’s administration was the chief architect of the idea to establish diplomatic ties and open the sealed Turkish-Armenian border -- the measures envisioned by the Zurich protocols. After pressure from the U.S., Ankara and Yerevan launched "soccer diplomacy", WikiLeaks said, referring to the Armenian and Turkish presidents’ participation at the soccer matches of the two countries’ national teams in the Turkish town of Bursa and Yerevan. As a result, Armenia backtracked from its previous stance and disrupted the talks with Azerbaijan on the Karabakh conflict, according to the cables.