ANDRANIK MIHRANIAN: MEETING IN KAZAN WAS DOOMED TO FAILURE

AZG Armenian Daily #155, 01/09/2005

Opinion

According to the Azeri Trend agency, Andranik Mihranian, political
expert from Moscow, said that the meeting of Kocharian and Aliyev was
doomed to failure, as that would be very difficult to agree something
on the eve of the parliamentary elections in Azerbaijan. Aliyev
and Kocharian also realize that. Mihranian believes that the sides
‘can’t do anything” to achieve the settlement.

“The settlement may be imposed either by the international community
or the status quo will be preserved, in the given case. This situation
will continue until one of the sides feels confident and strong enough
to settle the conflict by means of a war,” the political expert
stated. Reminding of the militant statements made by Ilham Aliyev,
Mihranian didn’t exclude that Azerbaijan will try to gain revenge.

Unless the super powers didn’t force the sides in conflict “the
decision of mutual concessions,” “that would be very difficult for
the authorities or Armenia and Azerbaijan to explain to their voters
why they make such unhelpful concessions.” As for Russia’s part,
Mihranian said that Russia has very limited financial, economical
and military-political opportunities. “Today the Russian potential
doesn’t allow doing more than they already do. They stopped consider
Russia a key country for the settlement of the conflict,” he said.