Sochi waits for Karabakh

Russia is making fresh efforts in the process of settling the Armenian Azerbaijani conflict. Russian president Dmitry Medvedev invited his Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, Serzh Sargsyan and Ilkham Aliyev, to Sochi on March 5. Ahead of this meeting, on February 25 the Armenian president will arrive in St Petersburg for additional consultations with Medvedev.

The precious meeting of the two leaders at the OSCE summit in December in Astana failed. After that, Russia organized two meetings of the foreign ministries of Armenia and Azerbaijan. They resulted in planning a new summit.

What should we expect from the next talks on Karabakh? The views of experts are hardly optimistic. A deputy of the Azeri parliament, Rasim Musabekov, believes that it is becoming more and more difficult to talk about a peaceful settlement of the conflict. He said that Armenia is beginning to lose Russian and Western support.

Ahead of the Sochi meeting and the official visit to Russia of the Turkish prime minister, Redžep Tayyip Erdogan, the mass media spread information about strengthening Russian and American efforts to promote relations between Armenia and Turkey.

The situation in the region was commented on by the Turkish political expert, Togrul Ismail.

-          Do you believe the information about the intentions of Russia and the US to promote progress in normalization relations between Turkey and Armenia?

-          The normalization of relations began several years ago. It was started by the signing of the protocols in Switzerland. After that, it was obvious that Russia didn’t participate in the normalization Turkish-Armenian relations. Ahead of every trilateral meeting there are discussions about the promotion of the process of normalization by Russia and the US. I think that Armenia and Turkey should decide what the adequate principals of cooperation are for them. As for the Sochi talks, I don’t believe in their effectiveness.

-          So you don’t expect a warming in relations between Armenia and Turkey and Armenia and Azerbaijan in the near future?

-          The point is that Armenia continues to develop the issue of “genocide”, even after the signing of the protocols. Secondly, Turkey supports the Azeri position in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and considers Armenia to be an occupant. Thus, today Armenia doesn’t want to compromise or promote cooperation with Turkey.

Vsevolod Veselov, Yevgeny Krishtalev. Exclusively to VK.