THERE ARE NO SERIOUS TALKS WITHOUT CONCESSIONS: VLADIMIR KAZIMIROV

YEREVAN, FEBRUARY 21. ARMINFO. Azerbaijan demands that international
attention be paid to the issue of occupied territories rather than the
gist of the Karabakh problem, says Vladimir Kazimirov, former Russian
co-chair, says in his article in Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

Kazimirov says that the Prague Process of the Armenian-Azeri foreign
ministerial talks is a nice label for the impatient. In fact this is
just rare meetings of the two FMs with the presence of the OSCE Minsk
Group who are instructed to facilitate talks between the conflicting
parties. The Minsk Process has brought the parties to nowhere and it
is not clear yet where the Prague Process is leading them to. They may
very well find another capital soon for a next stage in this endless
process.

There are no serious talks without concessions, says Kazimirov noting
that neither Armenian nor Azeri presidents have so far started
preparing their societies for concessions – on the contrary for many
years they have persuaded them that they will get rather than give.
Afraid of sitting down at the negotiating table in the last months
Azerbaijan has chosen the alternative of political propaganda at
international organizations. Hoping for compassion Baku is showing
just the hard consequences of the conflict.

As for PACE it takes the problem superficially – they do not care to
go as deep as to see how it all happened, who sought to solve the
problem by force, why the war was so long. There would be no
occupation if the conflict was solved by political means. Kazimirov
slates the Russian delegates who did not even open their mouths when
PACE ascribed to OSCE what was in reality achieved by Russia – the
1994 cease fire.

Kazimirov notes that if Mar 2 the FMs agree to move on stage by stage
but with package elements the sides will soon face the problem of
guaranteeing exclusively peaceful settlement for the conflict. It was
not by chance that in a recent meeting Pres.Putin told Pres.Aliev that
the Karabakh knot should be entangled by worthy means and that
security should be ensured in the region. The Azeri-proposed phased
scenario cannot be effected without no-war guarantees by the
conflicting parties. Only naivety can urge them to resume war just
because they believe they are at advantage at the moment.

This will require both material guarantees (demilitarization,
withdrawal of troops from occupied districts) and international
involvement. This in its turn will require serious changes in the
words and actions of Azerbaijan who regularly comes out with military
threats and boasts of its growing military expenses but complaining at
the same time of the privations of a million of Azeri refugees. As for
the Armenians they should renounce their “territories for status”
stance. The Karabakh problem should be voted on by the Karabakh people
rather than haggled on by the sides.

There are many examples: voting was Quebec rather than Canada, Eritrea
rather than Ethiopia, Eastern Timor rather than Indonesia.

Kazimirov says that very complicated problems are on the negotiating
table now – they will suffice for many years of intensive work even if
no additional difficulties are found by propaganda machine.