John Sarbanes: “The really discouraging thing was that the Minsk people made the proposal. That is the United States, France, and…”

“The really discouraging thing was that the Minsk people made the proposal. That is the United States, France, and Russia, speaking on behalf of the OSCE. And Azerbaijan rejected participating in that process. Had Azerbaijan accepted it and Armenia rejected it, I can imagine people would say, Azerbaijan is trying to make the peace process work, Armenia is blocking it, and we ought to go ahead and enter into this normal relationship with Azerbaijan. But that was not the case. Second--I will detail it later--to some extent I am reluctant to detail the human rights performance, because one does not like to come on the floor of the Senate and go into a lengthy exposition of that issue. We want people to improve. When we do these human rights reports, we try to not, as it were, overload them. But now when you offer an amendment that is going to take out the last limitation we have on aid, it seems to me at a minimum it warrants a very careful examination of the human rights performance within Azerbaijan. I am frank to tell you I think, once we undertake to do that, most Members are going to have increasingly growing questions about the nature of this regime and about whether we should be trying now to repeal any limitations on providing assistance which could serve as a way to try to get a better performance.”