The meeting that took place yesterday in Vienna with Foreign Ministers of the OSCE Minsk Group between the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia on the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will hardly change the situation drastically in the conflict zone. It is necessary to work on to find a mutually beneficial compromise. Today only Russia is able to achieve it. These viewpoints were expressed in an interview a 'Vestnik Kavkaza' correspondent by the leading expert at the Political Science Center 'North-South' Alexander Karavaev and Deputy Director at the CIS Institute, Vladimir Zharikhin who commented on the results of the talks between Ilham Aliyev and Serzh Sargsyan.
Zharihin expressed cautious optimism about the significance of the meeting. "Firstly, it is a positive fact that the Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan are ready to meet after the deterioration of the situation. Secondly, from my point of view, it is essential that the co-chairs of the Minsk Group (Russia, USA and France) have shown despite certain contradictions in many other areas that they have a sufficiently high level of agreement with each other. It is a guarantee that after this meeting the probability of the development of the situation will increase on the way of the negotiation process, instead of military actions,'' he said.
According to Karavaev, intermediaries were interested in the meeting most of all. "These negotiations were held in order to show how the Minsk Group works. That is why it is too early to announce that the parties have any progress. Both the one and the other side made statements they wanted to hear. Yerevan received some assurance that the monitoring mechanisms will be strengthened, and Baku receive guarantees that the phased plan will be carried out,'' the leading expert at the Political Science center 'North-South' explained his position.
The expert stressed that military actions influence the development of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict more than diplomatic agreements. "But for the three-day war in early April, it is unknown whether the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan could meet in Vienna, as well as how Moscow and Washington expressed their interests in this issue,'' he said.
This state of things leads to difficulties to settle the conflict soon, Zharihin underlined. "The situation is such that the Minsk Group has put forward its proposals, but they are quite compromis that is why they are satisfactory neither for the one, nor for the other side." the deputy director at the Institute of CIS countries said.
The problem of the parties is not only their unwillingness to real compromises, but also due to the lack of regulatory framework in order to the countries could avoid armed clashes, Alexander Karavaev noted. ‘’Not a single point of the agreement as of May 12th in 1994 does not work actually. The three main points were recorded: cease-fire, the introduction of peacekeepers, signing a full peace treaty within two months,’’ the leading expert at the Political Science center ‘North-South’ recalled.
Karavaev expressed confidence that the meeting in Vienna opened a new real chapter in the conflict, not April battles for Karabakh. ‘‘With the help of such counterattacks Azerbaijan will take control over the occupied areas. This is possible both in technical, and political ways. The mediators of the Minsk Group in the negotiating process cannot do anything to stop this, taking into account the fact that Azerbaijan acts on its territory. And it will repeat many times until Armenia realizes under Russia’s pressure that it is necessary to make concessions," he concluded.
