Baku, Azerbaijan, July 18
Trend:
Unlike Azerbaijan, Armenia has no desire to conduct productive negotiations on the peaceful settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Russian political analyst and expert on international issues Evgeny Mikhailov told Azernews on July 18.
“Readiness of the parties to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for negotiations is the first requirement to intensify the negotiation process on the conflict,” he said.
The expert also believes that it is necessary to change the guarantor countries of the negotiation process.
“The involvement of third countries has always been considered a positive thing for achieving peace, but in the case of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict it is necessary to remove the U.S. and France since they are absolutely useless countries on this issue,” Mikhailov said.
He added that the real guarantors of peace in the region are, first of all, Russia as well as Turkey and Iran. These countries should help to find a diplomatic consensus between Baku and Yerevan, the expert mentioned.
Mikhailov further touched upon the foreign policy of Armenia after the new authorities’ coming to power.
“I am concerned about the current policy of Armenia. It is aimed at the termination of relations with Moscow, which may affect the peaceful settlement of the Karabakh problem and regional security as a whole,” he noted.
The expert mentioned that in case of full orientation of Yerevan towards the West, Moscow will not be able to guarantee Armenia’s security interests. And if Armenia insists on the withdrawal of the Russian military base from Gyumri, then Moscow is likely to take drastic political decisions.
“I mean a complete change of Russia’s policy on the South Caucasus. This is primarily a possible convergence within military-political alliances with those countries that Armenia calls enemies,” Mikhailov said.
The conflict between the two South Caucasus countries began in 1988 when Armenia made territorial claims against Azerbaijan. As a result of the ensuing war, in 1992 Armenian armed forces occupied 20 percent of Azerbaijan, including the Nagorno-Karabakh region and seven surrounding districts.
The 1994 ceasefire agreement was followed by peace negotiations. Armenia has not yet implemented four UN Security Council resolutions on withdrawal of its armed forces from the Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding districts.