Usually, the leading world powers consider the situation developing around Nagorno-Karabakh in conjunction with events in the region of the Greater Middle East that border on the Caucasus. This is partly why since autumn of last year the processes associated with the actions of Iran and Turkey have forced the intermediaries involved in the Karabakh settlement to become more active.
Commenting on the Azerbaijani-Armenian summit on December 19th in Bern, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov thanked the co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group for their contribution to the organization of this meeting, but praised Russia's efforts aimed at the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, adding that in autumn Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov submitted proposals that formed the basis for the talks in Bern between Baku and Yerevan.
"These proposals contain agreements reached in 2014 at the meeting of the presidents in Sochi, New Port and Paris, and prepared on the basis of the updated Madrid principles," the head of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry said, stressing that it is time to start the preparation of a comprehensive peace agreement, based on updated Madrid principles, supported by the OSCE Minsk Group.
Nevertheless, at the beginning of this year observers suspect that the mediators of the Karabakh conflict settlement from the United States are playing their own game. Some experts have even suggested that the co-chairs in the negotiation process between Russia and France – Igor Popov and Pier Andrrie – took the activity of their American colleague for granted.
The point is that earlier this year the US co-chair James Warlick agreed to work towards a resolution of the conflict along with ten congressmen led by the head of the Foreign Relations Committee of the House of Representatives, Ed Royce, who represents the state of California, densely populated by Armenians.
Ed Royce
In Baku, where people are aware of the pro-Armenian proposals of US congressmen, the prospect of the cooperation of Warlick with odious parliamentarians caused considerable concern. In the eyes of the Azerbaijani side, the US Congress finally discredited itself when the head of its Helsinki Commission, Christopher Smith, developed a draft law called 'Act on democracy in Azerbaijan - 2015', proposed for discussion in the Committee, which is headed by Ed Royce.
Christopher Smith
Analysts believe that if the bill of Christopher Smith will receive the support of the Congress Committee on Foreign Affairs, it will increase its chances to pass through other committees, because its assessment of documents of political importance is considered to be fundamental for the decisions of other committees. Although from the point of view of common sense, the imposition of sanctions against Azerbaijan looks absurd. It is proposed to apply sanctions measures against the country, which each year holds major international events such as the Eurovision final or the first European Games, where issues of multiculturalism and tolerance are brought to the center stage of national policy, and we are talking about tolerance in relation to representatives of all peoples, ethnic groups and religions, where universities are operating, including education in English, particularly the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy and the Caucasus University.
However, the attempt to impose sanctions was only the first of the dishes prepared by the Armenian lobby of the US Congress. For the second, it is planned to submit a new plan for the Karabakh conflict settlement, including the retraction of snipers from the contact line of troops, increase of the mandate of the international observer group, and most importantly – placement of equipment, registering violations of the ceasefire on the border.
It is understandable why Armenia needs it – Yerevan does not give up trying to declare Azerbaijan (20% of whose territory is occupied by Armenian troops) "an aggressor country." But why does the United States need it? According to experts, through these steps Washington is trying to withdraw the issue of possible deployment of peacekeepers in the zone of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict from the agenda of the negotiations. On the official level, the theme of the introduction of Russian "blue helmets" has never arisen, but such an idea was voiced by experts more than once. This initiative has both advantages and disadvantages, but the main disadvantage from the point of view of the Armenian side is that it will be a violation of the status quo in the conflict zone, which is extremely undesirable for Yerevan, which wants the negotiation process on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict never to end.
Perhaps the US "control mechanism" in Nagorno-Karabakh is created in order to avoid the activation of Moscow in the region. Meanwhile, analysts are convinced that if the deployment of Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh is impossible without changing the status quo, the US "mechanisms which register violations", on the contrary, are designed to prevent attempts to violate the status quo.
It is not clear yet how Armenia is planning to connect these mechanisms with the agreements within the framework of the CSTO, according to which it has no right to place the infrastructure and equipment of third countries on the territory.
However, this is only the beginning of the process, and close interaction of the US co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group with the Armenian lobbyists in Congress may add fuel to the fire of a conflict that has not abated for more than two decades. Baku has already made statements about the possibility of replacing James Warlick with a more objective co-chair, who does not go beyond the scope of his intermediary authority.
Sergey Lavrov
It is interesting that the theme of such "mediation", even before the activization of the Warlick Royce tandem, was subtly raised by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Yerevan in November at a joint press conference with his Armenian counterpart, Edward Nalbandian: "Russia, the US and France strongly oppose the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement being made the subject of various international "platforms" that are not engaged in the settlement, instead making successively, business, patient dialogue (and the issue is indeed very complex, with its own history). At least no one gave them such an order on behalf of the international community. The co-chairs are working on the basis of agreements between the parties, approved by the UN Security Council. This "trio" are the authorized collective mediators on the Nagorno-Karabakh settlement. Any sudden radical actions, regardless of who makes them, only harm the plans and the work of the co-chairs, which is being carried out very actively, but not always publicly."
