Susanna Petrosyan, Yerevan. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
2013 was full of foreign political events for Armenia, with the most important of them happening at the end of the year.
We cannot say that there were serious events in negotiations on settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 2013. The reason for this was the electoral cycle in both countries, which came to an end. That’s why presidents Sargsyan and Aliyev met in November, when all elections had ended. The meeting after a long break (the last meeting took place in January 2012) was a positive phenomenon, but in general there was no progress in the process in 2013.
The main direction was talks between Armenia and the EU on signing the association and deep and overall free trade zone agreement. The talks continued for 3 and a half years. In the summer it was announced that they were completed. It was expected that in late November the President of Armenia would sign both documents, but it didn’t happen. On September 3rd President Serge Sargsyan made an unexpected statement on Armenia’s joining the Customs Union. According to some experts, the reason for this was misinterpretation or even misunderstanding of “complementarity” by the current authorities of the country.
In 1997 Armenia and Russia signed the agreement on friendship and cooperation. Therefore, Yerevan made the Russian direction a priority; all other foreign political directions should have been complementary. The foreign political course of the first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan fully accorded with the ideology of complementarity. Robert Kocharyan followed the same course with slight fluctuations. But under the current leadership official Yerevan stated that the European direction became a priority. Russia considered the statement and corresponding steps by Yerevan within the talks with the EU as an attack on its geopolitical positions. Even though officials from Yerevan say that the statement of September 3rd was made free-will, the logics of events which preceded it points out an influence on Yerevan.
The unexpected turn in the process which continued for three years and a half meant that the talks with the EU were started by the Armenian side without consideration of possible consequences, first of all in the security sphere. It is real failure of the European foreign political project. Some supporters of the president state that an agreement on Armenia’s joining the CU was achieved long ago. But it means that the Armenian side cheated on Europe for three years and a half.
Today all decisions on the CU are made hastily by Armenia, and it can lead to serious problems, first of all, a growth of prices for certain goods. The staggering of the Armenian authorities resulted in the fact that official Yerevan has no image of a reliable partner either in Russia or in the West today.
