RIA Novosti, Russia
Aug 24 2005

Expert says breakthroughs unlikely at Kocharyan-Aliyev summit

MOSCOW, August 24 (RIA Novosti, Andrei Malyshkin) – No breakthrough
agreements should be expected from the Armenian-Azerbaijani
presidential summit August 27, a leading Russian political analyst
said Wednesday.

Konstantin Zatulin, the Director of Russia’s Institute for CIS
Studies and a member of the CIS affairs committee in the State Duma,
parliament’s lower house, said it is highly unlikely that the
upcoming meeting between Armenia’s Robert Kocharyan and Azerbaijan’s
Ilham Aliyev in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, will resolve
problems that have been plaguing the two countries’ relations for
years.

“There have been all kinds of problems arising at meetings between
Armenia and Azerbaijan at various levels-there was a time when the
president of Azerbaijan would ostentatiously refuse to meet with the
president of Armenia-[so] the mere fact that such a meeting [is
taking place] is good news,” Zatulin said.

But he said he did not see any prerequisites for diplomatic progress
in solving problems that had accumulated between the two countries
over the years, most notably the long-standing dispute over Nagorny
Karabakh, a region inside Azerbaijan with a predominantly ethnic
Armenian population.

Asked whether he thought the redeployment of personnel from the
Russian military bases in Georgia to Gyumri, in Armenia, could help
resolve the Karabakh conflict, Zatulin said Azerbaijan was using the
issue to once again accuse Russia and Armenia of conspiring against
it. “The Armenia-Russia relationship is one of a common defense and I
think [officials] in Azerbaijan should realize that,” he said.