The letter from the U.S. President Barack Obama to the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev, which the new U.S. co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group James Warlick brought to Baku, speaks about "the strong and unequivocal commitment of the U.S. to the achievement of a peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict by the parties," as well as "support for the possibilities of direct dialogue with Armenia." Obama stressed that it is time for the establishment of peace in the region as part of the compromise reached in the negotiations.
Deputy of the Milli Majlis of Azerbaijan, political scientist Rasim Musabekov and director of the Institute of International Studies, MGIMO Andrey Kazantsev commented on the letter and saw two reasons for such strong words on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Musabekov said that the U.S. made it clear that it intends to seize the initiative from Russia in the negotiations.
"For two years, even more, the negotiation process has been stalled, not conducted. This has raised concerns in the United States, it has been repeatedly talked about it, and we see that the US is "angry" about it. This is understandable, since for the last five years first fiddle has been played in this process by Russia. Meetings have been held at the initiative of the Russian president, when Medvedev was the head of state, later the process stalled," Musabekov noted.
Kazantsev suggested that in this way the U.S. is trying indirectly to put pressure on Armenia, which last week launched its integration vector in the direction of Russia. "Basically, I can say that there is nothing new in this: the U.S. position in the framework of the OSCE Minsk Group has always been that they are committed to promoting dialogue and so on. The only 'but' was that they were not very willing to invest resources into this dialogue, that is, to invest in assistance to refugees or to organize a platform for meetings. Medvedev tried to do that, Sarkozy at one point tried to do it, maybe now Obama will try as well," Kazantsev said.
