Baku, Azerbaijan, May 19
Trend:
This week the Italian capital of Rome is hosting a NATO conference.
The senior editor of the Trend Agency's, Claude Salhani, made a speech at the event.
"Egypt is bombing Libya. Saudi Arabia is bombing Yemen, the United States, France, Britain, Canada and Australia, the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Denmark, Bahrain, Qatar are bombing Syria and Iraq. The Iraqis and the Syrians are bombing themselves. Amidst all the mayhem and horrors of the Levant and North Africa, I arrived just under a year and a half ago in Baku," said Salhani.
"As I speak to you today, I look back at my 40 plus years as a journalist covering the Greater Middle East, I realize that the state of the world has, at least to my recollection, never been in such disarray," he added.
Salhani noted that since he arrived in Baku, he has been trying to ascertain where it is located from geographical point of view.
"I had somehow assume that it was in Asia," he said. "But soon I learnt that I was completely wrong."
Salhani said, every time he asks Azerbaijanis where they think Azerbaijan is located, they all without any hesitation tell him that the country is in Europe.
"To hammer that thought home, a few months ago I came across a strong lead, a clue - the first ever European Games," he said. "If they hold such an important sporting event in Baku it must certainly mean that Baku is in Europe. Azerbaijan thus was geographically in Europe."
"However, as a good journalist I needed a second reliable source to my story," said Salhani. "I decided to go to the ultimate source and inquire with the people who have all the information, all the intelligence in the world. These are the folks that the president of the United States begins his day every morning only after having received his morning briefing from them."
"You probably guessed it," he said. "Yes, I'm talking about the US Central Intelligence Agency. Well, I didn't actually go to them because their offices are not easy to get into, but they do publish something called the Factbook, The World Factbook."
"I mean anything that has in the same sentence the words "factbook" and CIA, has to be good, right? I went online looked up the latest edition on the CIA's World Factbook. And lo and behold, where does the CIA place Azerbaijan? In the Middle East!," he added.
"Well, I arrived there - be it Europe or the Middle East, believing that I was coming to a quieter place than my old hunting grounds of the Middle East. I thought that I was getting away from never-ending conflicts. I thought that the Caucasus was far saner than the ever-turbulent Middle East. Oh how naïve I was," Salhani said.
He added that like many people outside the region, he had no particular interest in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which has been going on for over 20 years.
"I was aware of it, superficially, though I had an edge on many because I had briefly covered the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia because of Nagorno-Karabakh, when Armenia just occupied Azerbaijani territories," he said. "But I had no idea of just how serious and precarious the situation on the ground was to this day."
"I think a good way to describe the precarious sense of the situation and to make the international community realize the need for urgency is to think of the region, especially what is taking place along the line of contact between the Armenian and Azerbaijani troops," he said.
Salhani believes that the conflict could spread beyond the line of contact and engulf the region into a larger war, something the West doesn't want at this juncture and must avoid at all costs.
"Think of the consequences," he said. "Armenia, although its economy has been devastated by its continued occupation of Nagorno-Karabakh, continues to hold on, and remains dependent on Russia for just about everything, except the air they breathe. And even that is questionable."
"The situation is so out of hand that Armenia can no longer make any independent political calls without clearing it with Moscow first. It has become totally dependent on Moscow for its security and its existence practically," Salhani said.
"This conflict, if left unresolved, could very easily morph into a major regional conflagration, dragging other countries in to the vortex," he said.
"If Azerbaijan got involved in a major military operation, what is Turkey's response likely to be, given that the two countries are bound by a mutual defense agreement? If Turkey became involved in a major military expedition, and Russia intervened, how that would affect the rest of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries?" asked Salhani.
He reminded that Azerbaijan is an important supplier of oil and natural gas to Europe, saying that a conflict would certainly affect its energy industry, weakening it financially.
"The network of pipelines that carry Azerbaijan's gas and oil through Azerbaijan and Turkey could become easy targets in a conflict. If this conflict was to erupt in winter, parts of Europe would freeze," Salhani stressed.
He also said that today Azerbaijan is a strong and stable nation.
"But the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh remains like a thorn in its side. Azerbaijan is a friend of the West, it supports the West and has adopted a Western approach to life all while maintaining its rich culture, in a perfect example of how the two cultures can coexist and intermingle in peace and harmony," said Salhani.
He said, however, a conflict would send the country in the opposite direction.
"Let us not allow this to happen," Salhani added. "Azerbaijan wants to be European. Let us help it achieve this aim rather than sending it into the side of darkness.
"The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been ignored for way too long. So far we have been lucky, so far we have been very lucky, but to be successful in geopolitics one needs more than luck - one needs a coherent strategy," he further said.
He noted that it would be a shame to categorize Azerbaijan as another country in the Middle East.
"Let us make sure it remains in Europe, where it wants to be, where it should be, and where it would be advantageous to the NATO to have a friend such as Azerbaijan. But the clock is ticking and time is not eternal in this instance," Salhani said in his speech.
He said that as a first step the OSCE Minsk Group should try to reach a settlement of this conflict, and for this it needs to bed expanded.
"The current composition of the Minsk Group is made up of the US, France and Russia. The latter has vested interests in maintaining the status quo, and the other two countries are influenced by Armenian lobby," he said.
"Again, let me stress and underline the fact that time is of the essence," Salhani, adding that the conflict cannot be left to unresolved for another 20 years.
"It cannot, and should not be left to simmer for another 20 months," he stressed. "The Middle East is in utter turmoil today. We need to do everything possible to prevent the turmoil from spreading through the Caucasus - the gateway between Europe and Central Asia."