A few days layer, on March 20 and 21, 2001, the meetings of Foreign Minister of Armenia Vardan Oskanyan and U.S. President’s National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell took place in Washington.

On March 21, U.S. Department of State Spokesman Richard Boucher said that the meeting of Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents in Key-West would last 4 days. He noted then that the meeting in Key-West would become the continuation of the direct dialogue between Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents, as well as the continuation of the “work, carried out by them recently with the participation of French President Jacques Chirac”.

The same day, while having a meeting with students of University of Economics in Yerevan, Armenian President Robert Kocharian stated that the resource of his meetings with the Azerbaijani President in “one-to-one” format was almost exhausted. Robert Kocharian described the upcoming meeting with Heydar Aliyev on April 3 in Florida as “important”. According to him, the sides had already clarified each other’s positions as to disputable issues, and the “baton” of continuing the negotiations was to be passed to OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs.

Armenian President stated that at the meeting with Heydar Aliyev in Florida he would insist upon observing 3 main principles of Karabakh conflict settlement:

1. Legal equality of the sides of the conflict:

2. Ruling out the possibility of enclave existence of Nagorno-Karabakh;

3. International security guarantees for the population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

On March 29, Richard Boucher stressed that the United States, together with Russia and France, had been intensively workiyng for the settlement of Karabakh conflict over the previous years.

“Presidents met with Jacques Chirac in Paris. In order to secure progress at the negotiations, we worked very closely with Russia and France. At the given stage, Presidents should face each other and discuss ways of achieving settlement, and this is what we are going to do in Key West”, Boucher was saying.

At a special briefing in Washington on April 2, on the eve of the launch of negotiations, an unannounced “senior representative of the Department of State” was making a speech. It is obvious that it was Minsk Group American Co-chair Carey Cavanaugh.

The diplomat said that the upcoming meeting in Key West was to strongly differ both from the previous direct meetings between Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents, and from their recent negotiations with the participation of French President Jacques Chirac. He stated that in Florida, OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs would carry out continuous negotiations both together with the two Presidents and with each of them individually.

Answering the question whether there existed clear-cut differentiation between Nagorno-Karabakh and the six regions of Azerbaijan at the negotiations, the diplomat said: “we are workiyng over an all-comprehensive solution of the Karabakh conflict”. At the same time, he said that territorial issues were of priority importance, since “a significant part of Azerbaijan is in the hands of Armenia today”. The American diplomat also said that issues concerning “the future political status of Nagorno-Karabakh” and the return of refugees were of principle nature.

The diplomat also stressed that in case of significant progress at the meeting between Armenian and Azerbaijani Presidents in Florida, OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs were ready to launch new consultations with international financial institutions in order to establish a special mission on economic rehabilitation of the region. He reminded that in May, 2000, a meeting had taken place in Geneva with participation of representatives of international financial institutions at the initiative of the mediators, where they had discussed the opportunities of setting up such a mission.

The American diplomat also said that the triple co-chairmanship of OSCE Minsk Group, despite the initial concerns, had turned out to be quite effective. “By the example of the Middle East, Northern Ireland and Cyprus, we know how complex it is to make progress in negotiations. But in case of Nagorno-Karabakh, worKeyng together with Russia and France, we see the chance of progress”, American diplomat was saying.