Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 8 / Trend /
Heritage Foundation's leading expert on Eurasia Ariel Cohen said that Baku, Tbilisi and even Yerevan believe that the United States' political course in the South Caucasus is failing.
"U.S. efforts to normalize Armenian-Turkish relations in isolation from the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict have not yielded positive results," Cohen said in an interview with the Caucasus Times.
Turkish and Armenian foreign ministers Ahmet Davutoglu and Edward Nalbandian signed the Ankara-Yerevan protocols in Zurich on Oct. 10, 2009.
During the Swiss-mediated talks, Turkey and Armenia reached an agreement to launch "internal political consultations" on Aug. 31 to sign the "Protocol on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations and Protocol on the Development of Bilateral Relations," the Turkish Foreign Ministry reported.
Diplomatic relations between Armenia and Turkey have been severed since 1993 due to Armenia's claims of an alleged genocide and its occupation of Azerbaijani lands.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. Armenian armed forces have occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan since 1992, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a ceasefire agreement in 1994. The co-chairs of the OSCE Minsk Group - Russia, France, and the United States - are currently holding the peace negotiations.
Armenia has not yet implemented the U.N. Security Council's four resolutions on the liberation of Nagorno Karabakh and the surrounding regions.
Turkish-Armenian and Armenian-Azerbaijani relations have been at the same level, at which they were, at least, three years ago, Cohen said.
"The United States has failed to persuade the parties to abandon the pre-conditions preventing the normalization of the relations," he said. "Turkish officials constantly drew parallels between the Armenian-Turkish rapprochement process and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, clearly stating that these processes are linked and their solution is impossible in separate."
Washington, Cohen said, showed detachment toward Azerbaijan quite a long time by not appointing a U.S. ambassador to that country since July last year.
"This fact seriously worries the Azerbaijani establishment, and this has repeatedly been voiced by representatives of the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry, including in Washington," he said. "The internal reasons undermine the appointment of experienced diplomat Matthew Bryza to this post. In addition, Baku is angered at the U.S. support for hte normalization of Turkey-Armenia relations without reference to the Nagorno-Karabakh issue."
Cohen added that the occupation of Azerbaijani territory was one of the main reasons for the break in Turkey-Armenia relations in 1993.
However, striving for peacemaking, the White House has just closed eyes to many aspects of the complex relationships in the Baku-Ankara-Yerevan axis, he said.
"The Obama administration overlooks the fact that Azerbaijan is a secular Muslim state, whose elite is committed to Western values and the existence of such a partner on the border with Iran, Turkey and Russia is important," he said. "Given the fact that the rating of the United States in the Islamic world is rather low, the presence of allies-Islamic countries bordering the Caspian Sea and in the Central Asia is an important trump card for Washington. The country has considerable energy resources and is ready to deliver them to the West, including in the framework of the economically uneasy Nabucco project, which Moscow has long sought to torpedo."
The main thing that should worry the United States is Azerbaijan's discontent with the Obama administration's policy, which may persuade Baku to move toward closely allied relations with Russia, Cohen said.
He also noted that there are objective prerequisites for such a move. Already, both Turkey and Azerbaijan are more oriented toward partnership with Russia due to their geographic location, growing trade and economic ties, and Moscow's peaceful approach to the peculiarities of political life in both countries, he said.
"Of course, it is impossible to please everyone at once in a region with diametrically opposed interests," Cohen said. "Unfortunately, U.S. policy in the region, which both parties have pursued over the last 20 years during the Clinton and Bush administrations, is in deep crisis."
Today, Moscow is doing everything to strengthen its regional leadership by all available means, he said.
Cohen believes it is not difficult amid the Obama administration's apparent weakening of interest in the South Caucasus. The Kremlin took over the main role of the mediator in the territorial dispute between Baku and Yerevan, and is now trying to keep a delicate balance between its traditional ally, which is Armenia, and its prospective partner Azerbaijan, he said.