NEGOTIATIONS ON NK PROBLEM ARE DRAGGED OUT BECAUSE OF CONTRADICTIONS AMONG MEDIATORS, ARMENIAN EXPERTS BELIEVE
Noyan Tapan News Agency, Armenia
Sept 12 2006
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 12, NOYAN TAPAN. Uncertainty reigns in the
peaceful settlement process of the Karabakh conflict. It’s reason is
the mediators’ new position. Sergey Shakariants, an expert of the
"Caucasus" analytical center stated about it at the September 12
press conference.
In his words, in spite of the fact that the OSCE Minsk Group
Co-Chairmen impose the conflicting sides to make definite concessions,
the Co-Chairmen themselves understand well that the sides are not
able to take concrete steps.
"Each of the OSCE MG Co-Chair countries pulls the blanket on itself,
and the negotiations are dragged out because of contradictions among
them," Sergey Shakariants stated.
He explained that the OSCE MG review its approaches on the Karabakh
conflict settlement process, and just it is the reason for delay of
the problem solution. In the expert’s words, the mediator’s interests
may conditionally be devided into the U.S. interests on one hand,
and interests of France and Russia, on the other hand. Shakariants
especially spoke about the U.S. positions. In his words, the U.S. is
aimed to create a society in the NKR, formed of two communities:
Armenian and Azerbaijani. "An attempt of implementation of the
Cyprus variant is made, and then the U.S. gets possibility to bring
peace-keepers to Karabakh, and they need it for implementation of the
Iranian program. The U.S. is not interested in the Nagorno Karabakh
fate, as it considers the latter to be a bridgehead for possible war
provocations against Iran," the expert stated.
At the same time, in his words, implementation of that plan stopped
because of the Lebanese-Israeli conflict when it was found out
that the regular army is not able to lead war actions against
Shiite partisans. "The U.S. stopped implementation of that plan,
and it is not excluded that they will review their programs and, it’s
possible, they will do their best to blow up Iran from inside," Sergey
Shakariants stated. In his words, it was found out that the U.S. is
at all alone in the issue of Iran, and even their devoted allies,
like Great Britain and Israel, do not want to struggle against Iran.