POLITICAL ANALYSIS: SURVEY OF ANALYSTS ON ARMENIAN ISSUES
By M. Alkhazashvili
The Messenger, Georgia
Sept 27 2005
The non-profit group Armenian Assembly of America recently conducted
a survey in which 24 American and Western European experts, former
statesmen and analysts took part. An analysis of the survey shows
that in the opinion of these specialists, the situation in the frozen
Azeri-Armenian conflict may undergo a tidal shift to the benefit of
Azerbaijan in the coming years.
Since 2004, the Armenian Assembly’s Office of Research & Information
has conducted an annual survey in an effort to gauge analysts’
opinions of how Armenian issues are perceived in the United States
and Western Europe.According to the paper AZG Armenian Daily, the
survey was conducted by Tim Manook at St. Andrews University, UK,
and supervised by Emil Sanamyan at the Armenian Assembly.
When asked “which state of the near east would have positive or
negative influence on Armenia?” the answers were, as reported by
Akhali Taoba: 45 percent Azerbaijan, 16 percent Turkey, 11 percent
Russia and 9 percent Georgia.
Forty two percent of those questioned stated that if war takes place
in the next decade Armenia would win, though 29 percent stated that
conflict would result in a stalemate. The remainder did not answer.
But the situation changes after 2015. Thirty-three percent of
respondents believe that Azerbaijan will gain a military victory
over Armenia if war breaks at that time and only four percent predict
victory for Armenia in such a case.
As for the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, 62 percent of specialists
polled think that a change in the status quo of the region is not to
be expected in the near future.
Analysts pessimistically evaluate the prospects of U.S. relations
with Russia and Iran. At the same time they expect that U.S.
influence in the Caucasus region will increase.
As for Turkey’s integration into the European Union, the respondents
stated that this is unlikely to happen before 2020-2025 because,
according to their prognosis, Ankara will not recognize the Ottoman
Turks’ massacre of Armenians and will seek to deepen its relations
with Washington instead.
However, some of the analysts predicted that the U.S. itself would
recognize the Armenian genocide within the next five years. A
significant step toward such a recognition occurred on September
15, when the U.S. House of Representatives’ International Relations
committee approved a resolution to recognize the events as genocide by
a vote of 40-7. The government of Turkey has maintained that the events
in question were not caused by a state intention to eliminate Armenians
and that fewer people were killed then claimed by the Armenian side.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress