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The change of government in Armenia presents new opportunities for the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) conflict settlement, former U.S. Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group and Ambassador James Warlick said in an interview to Voice of America’s Armenian Service.

“It appears that [Azerbaijani] President Aliyev has accepted that there are new opportunities. I believe under such conditions the co-chairs are working on organizing an official summit between the leaders of the two countries,” he said.

Warlick, who is now a partner at Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners, a major Russian law firm co-founded by Putin’s close friend and classmate Nikolai Egorov, in the U.S., does not share the claims Moscow is not interested in the Karabakh conflict settlement.

“In my three years as a co-chair, I saw no facts of that. On the contrary, working with the Russian government, I saw their interest in the settlement process, which is logical. Russia is facing numerous other challenges worldwide and wouldn’t want an escalation of the conflict between its long-time friends Armenia and Azerbaijan close to its borders,” he said.

Earlier in February former U.S. Co-Chair of the Minsk Group Richard Hoagland stressed there are some Russian regions that have no interest in the full settlement of the conflict out of fear that the Kremlin would lose its leverage on Baku and Yerevan.

The former diplomat stressed the need to resolve the conflict which, according to him, is becoming more dangerous rather than frozen through the course of time.

“Do you think another generation wants to live under these clouds? Of course not. And the same in Azerbaijan: do you think the people in Azerbaijan want to leave with this issue for another generation? Of course not,” he said.

According to Warlick, the principles of the Karabakh conflict are mostly unchanged and well known, now included in the so-called “Lavrov program”, which, however, Warlick does not prefer calling after the Russian foreign minister.

“These are not state secrets. The outlines of the settlement have been discussed for many years and require bold steps from the sides to move forward,” he said.