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The head of Washington news bureau of the Azerbaijani TV channel ANS, Ganira Atashova, aroused a wave of facetious comments from the public for her question at a press briefing at the White House, according to the local website Minval.az.

According to the report, Atashova tried to ask the official US Department of State spokesperson, John Kirby, about Washington’s opinion over Minsk group OSCE Chairman James Warlick’s meeting with the official representatives of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic in the territory of the US. However, she asked the question in English and her language skills only aroused the State Spokesperson’s laughter and misunderstanding. Asking for time to look for some information in his notebook, John Kirby decided to clarify the Azerbaijani journalist’s question once more. The attempts to read out the text again aroused giggling in the whole hall, Minval.az writes.

According to the website, the opinions vary over the incident. Notable public activists, political figures and journalists in Azerbaijan criticised Atashova saying that it is a nonsense to appoint journalists who do not speak English in a foreign bureau. “For unknown reasons, our translator could not get into the hall during the Department of State press briefing. The question was important for Azerbaijan, and Atasheva asked it how she could,” Khanim Yadigarli, the editor-in-chief of the news service of ANS TV channel said in a statement cited by the local website Musavat.com.

Haqqin.az also commented on the topic. “The most ridiculous part of the situation is that the overwhelming majority of Atasheva’s critics speak and write with appalling stylistic, factual and grammatical mistakes in their own language. Most of them do not speak either Russian or English,” the website writes.

On 8 December 2015, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic, Karen Mirzoyan, met with Co-Chair of the OSCE Minsk Group Ambassador James Warlick in Washington. A range of issues related to the current state of affairs in the negotiation process were discussed at the meeting. In particular, the sides emphasised the necessity of undertaking steps to exclude the violations of the cease-fire regime and reduce tension along the Line of Contact.

The meeting of the NKR Foreign Minister and OSCE Minks Group US Co-Chair displeased and troubled Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry. Novruz Mammadov, the deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Azerbaijan and the head of Foreign Relations Department, said the OSCE Minsk Group does not implement all the possible tools of the international law in resolving the Nagorno Karabakh conflict.