ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

e called the “Prague Process” which is the foundation of the talks that continue to the
present day.
Q: Prague! Do I guess correctly that you had something to do with picking this city?
PERINA: I admit I did but there was a rationale behind it. We agreed among the Co-
Chairs that we wanted these new talks near Vienna, which is the headquarters of the
OSCE, but not directly in Vienna where other Minsk Group country delegations might try
to get involved. We also wanted the talks in Eastern rather than Western Europe just
because it would be less expensive, and the OSCE would be paying all the costs of the
meetings. It basically came down to Warsaw, Prague or Budapest. What decided it was
that Prague had a small, permanent OSCE office that dated from the early 1990’s when
some OSCE Permanent Council meetings were held there. The office was a type of
secretariat, and it was underemployed. We saw that this would be a great help in all the
administrative and logistical organization of these meetings, since the Co-Chairs had no
standing staff except the assistants to the three Ambassadors. I admit I also did favor
Prague because I knew the city, the language and had good contacts with some Czech
diplomats. But those were secondary considerations. The Co-Chairs agreed on Prague
and so did the Armenians and Azeris.
Q: Were the Czechs happy when they learned this would be coming to town?
PERINA: They were very happy. I raised it first with the Czech Ambassador to the
OSCE. He reported it to the Czech Foreign Ministry, and in less than a week we had
Czech acceptance of the proposal. We made a trip to Prague to work out the terms, and
the Czechs even gave us free use of a beautiful palace called Stirin about 45 minutes
outside of Prague. Initially, each President nominated a Personal Representative at the
deputy foreign minister level. For the Armenians it was Tatoul Markarian, later an
Armenian Ambassador to Washington, and for the Azeri side it was Araz Azimov. The
first meeting of the Prague process took place at Stirin Palace on May 13-15, 2002. The
Czech Foreign Minister attended the inaugural session.
Q: So what happened?
PERINA: Well, we started again exploring ideas and options for a solution. The talks
really started almost from the beginning. But this was the process I was involved in for
the next two years. As the Prague Process continued, it changed a little in format. We
began meeting in other cities as well with the Presidents and Foreign Ministers. Toward
the end of my tour, the Prague Process was upgraded when the Presidents nominated
their Foreign Ministers, rather than Deputy Foreign Ministers, as their representatives. It
was almost moved from the Stirin Palace to a venue very near the Prague Castle just for
convenience sake. The last Minsk Group meeting I had was in Prague in April 2004 when
the Armenian and Azeri foreign ministers met as the Personal Representatives.
One thing I should clarify. When I said the Co-Chairs were mediators, that was perhaps
misleading. The role of the Co-Chairs was not to mediate in the sense of to arbitrate. We
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