U.S. ADOPTS NON-EFFECTIVE APPROACH IN ISSUE OF NAGORNO KARABAKH SETTLEMENT, ARMENIAN EXPERT CONSIDERS

Noyan Tapan
Jun 26 2006

YEREVAN, JUNE 26, NOYAN TAPAN. "The international structures have
made certain that Armenia and Azerbaijan draw out time and do not want
to settle the conflict," Stepan Safarian, Director on Studies of the
Armenian Center for National and International Studies, declared in
his interview to Noyan Tapan correspondent.

According to him, the meetings of the two Presidents in Rambouillet and
in Bucharest demonstrated that the expectations of the international
community are vain and the Presidents will not sign the working
document on the negotiations table.

According to the expert, the change of the American Ambassador in
Armenia, as well as the substitution of the American Co-chair in the
OSCE Minsk Group mean that the U.S. will enter into the negotiations
process already from another positions.

Stepan Safarian expressed a supposition that at the moment the
U.S. conducts a serious discussion at different levels about the
further scenarios, including the new strategy and tactics in the
issue of the peaceful settlement of the conflict.

In response to the question, what one can expect from the possible
change in the tactics of the U.S. in the issue of conflict settlement,
the expert expressed confidence that the tactics will change. The
main reason of it is that the U.S. was not able to solve the problem
on the settlement of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict: "In this issue
the U.S. has adopted a non-effective approach. Besides, not only the
conflict fails to be solved, but also prospects of democratization of
the two countries are sacrificed and authoritarian processes become
deeper and deeper there."

According to him, the subsequent steps will be based on the discussion
of the long-term prospects of conflict settlement, democratization
of the societies, transformation of the conflict, etc.

In this context S.Safarian prognosed a real activization of the
home political life of Armenia. In particular, he connected the
developments in the negotiations process with the home political
developments in Armenia. "I think that all this, in its turn, will
result in a serious crisis of power. These processes will become more
intensive after the U.S. clarifies its new approaches."