EXPERTS SAY KARABAKH TALKS CALMED DOWN AZERBAIJAN AND UPPED RUSSIA’S PRESTIGE
by Anastasia Kirilenko

WPS Agency
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
November 7, 2008 Friday
Russia

RUSSIA PLAYED PEACEKEEPER IN THE MATTER OF KARABAKH SETTLEMENT; Russia
brokered Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Aleksei Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center said there were
two ways of looking at the talks between three presidents. To begin
with, the negotiations marked Russia’s undeniable success. "Seeing
Medvedev between Sargsjan and Aliyev was something without precedent,"
Malashenko said.

As for the settlement itself, the involved parties worked out five
clauses. "Practically all of them are vague," Malashenko said. "Clause
Four is particularly interesting, the one on non-use of weapons. It
is the fact of the talks that counts here. This is the first time
after the war with Georgia that Russia played a peacekeeper. Along
with everything else, Russia confirmed that the OSCE Minsk Group
exists and that Russia does not aspire to the right to make any
single-handed decisions because there is also France, United States,
and so on. It is a success of Russian diplomacy, particularly from
the standpoint of what we’ve been seeing since August."

As for the promises made by the first president of Armenia Levon
Ter-Petrosjan who said that the Karabakh conflict would be settled
inside of 2-3 months, Malashenko commented that no impending settlement
of the conflict should be counted on.

Aleksei Vlasov, Director of the Center for Studies of Sociopolitical
Processes in the post-Soviet zone, said it would be possible to
gauge efficiency of the talks when "preliminary agreements evolve
into something more fundamental and serious." "Matter of fact, nobody
expected from the first meeting any documents that would have become
a practical solution to the problem," Vlasov said.

The expert said that activization of Russia in the region stemmed from
several reasons: firstly, "Karabakh conflict settlement with Russian
involvement in whatever capacity will show the Russian leadership
capable of using diplomacy of words as effectively as it used strength
during the South Ossetian conflict."

The second factor comes down to Moscow’s reluctance to permit other
players to strengthen their positions in the region. "Russia’s
withdrawal from Karabakh conflict settlement might have persuaded
Azerbaijan to try and settle the matter by force. Or else, it
might have strengthened United States’ position as an arbiter and
broker of the negotiations between Azerbaijan and Armenia," Vlasov
added. "Moreover, even Armenia that is known as Russia’s traditional
ally in the region is ready to advance cooperation with the United
States."

Last but not least comes understanding that latent conflicts are
dangerous. "The example of Abkhazia and South Ossetia plainly shows
that these conflicts stop being latent sooner or later," Vlasov
said. "The situation we have in the northern part of the Caucasus
would have affected its southern part, and the nature of this effect
would have been hard to predict."