IS BRITISH PETROLEUM TO REGULATE THE NAGORNO-KARABAKH CONFLICT?
Karine Ter-Sahakyan

PanARMENIAN.Net
24.01.2009 GMT+04:00

Not participating in the OSCE Minsk Group efforts to regulate the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Great Britain is trying to force her
interests through various organizations.

The desire to please the client at all costs very often has a dismal
end. It becomes especially apparent in people who, to the best of
their ability, try to give the black for the white and when settling
conflicts are reluctant to consider others’ viewpoints. Moreover,
when discussing a conflict, for some reason they Â"do not noticeÂ"
the public, at the same time taking refuge in democracy.

/PanARMENIAN.Net/ Another Â"recipeÂ" for regulating the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict has been published by Thomas de Vaal:
"The Karabakh Trap. Threats and Dilemmas of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Conflict. Rough Draft for Discussion." It was published in the
notorious website Mediaforum.az, which Â"hit the big timeÂ" as the
spreader of the fabricated story of "selling Russian military hardware
to Armenia".

It is boring and unpleasant to read the whole material that counts
to 20 pages, especially when behind it distinctly show the ears
of British Petroleum and those of many other organizations that,
roughly speaking, have been living on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
for 20 years already. The report is so pro-Azerbaijani that it gives
the impression it was written in Baku, not in London. By the way,
it may in fact be so. Judge yourselves.

Â"Today the defeated party feels more and more confident and
is impatiently waiting for the change of status-quo in their
favour. The present situation, in which in addition to the disputed
Nagorno-Karabakh region there are seven more Azerbaijani regions fully
or partially occupied by the Armenian troops, cannot last endlessly. "I
don’t want my son to inherit this problem, that is why I am for the
war," said an educated Azeri of 30, and the number of advocates of
this view is rapidly risingÂ". By the way, this kind of references
to certain Armenians and Azeri are typical examples of this sort of
journalism which we mistakenly call western style.

But let us go on. Â"Armenians take Nagorno-Karabakh as an Armenian
territory liberated from Azerbaijan. The young generation that grows
up in NKR and in Armenia does not know any other NK region and always
hears various statements claiming that the seven occupied Azerbaijani
territories are in reality Â"liberated territoriesÂ" that on no account
should be given away. But Armenia keeps on suffering economically and
the international community criticizes her for the conflict. "Karabakh
is a stick with which we are always hit on the face," noted an Armenian
officialÂ". Even if we do not pay attention to the writing style, in
fact we have been hearing and reading it all for more than a year. In
this connection one of the joint round tables can be recalled, when
the representatives of Azerbaijan dwelt on their oil for so long that
Armenians could not stand it any longer and asked quite reasonably:
"Do you have anything else except oil?"

Yet, let us continue with the citations from de Vaal. Â"It is an
undisputable fact that Azerbaijan is growing thanks to its rich oil
reserves. But no one knows what future the country awaits with such
dynamic changes in view. Its international reputation is much weighty
today than it used to be about ten years ago, and public figures
of Azerbaijan today compensate the deficiency of respect which,
in their opinion, they used to feel for years. In the words of an
international representative that now lives in Baku "At the meetings
with diplomats, foreign parliamentarians and NGO representatives Azeri
officials make statements like "You need us more than we need you"
or "Don’t use that tone of voice when talking to us"Â". On June 26
a grandiose military parade was organized in Baku. It was the first
parade since 1992 and gave Azerbaijan an opportunity to show the
whole world its newly-obtained military equipment.

After the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline was put into operation in
2006 Azerbaijani oil profits rapidly rose. According to the latest
forecasts of British Petroleum, if additional investments are made in
Azeri-Chirag-Gyuneshli "the peak of oil production will be reached
not in 2012 as it was forecasted before, but in six-seven years’
time." But the interesting point is that the author also notes drop
of oil price and world crisis. Thus, Azerbaijan is either on another
planet or it does not really make out anything it writes about.

The situation in Armenia is bad and we know it ourselves. Â"Armenia
spent most of 2008 in the clutches of political crisis. The ongoing
negative echoes of the Presidential Elections held in February and the
tragic violence of March 1 in Yerevan led to a split in the society
and still remain a problem for the new President Serzh SargsyanÂ". It
comes out that it is democracy to disperse and prohibit demonstrations
in Baku, ban foreign radio stations, arrest and beat journalists,
whereas dispersal of protesters who had become unruly after the ten-day
tolerance of the authorities is considered to be violence. If it is
so, de Vaal is right. Unfortunately, human rights advocates use the
victims of March 1 in their own favour, overlooking the chief offender
of the occurrence. However, all this is only indirectly related to
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

Let us refer to another citation from the British Â"expertÂ". Â"During
the year of 2008 universal support of territorial integrity of
Azerbaijan has become a signal indicating that unlike Kosovo NKR
cannot receive recognition and her status will remain fragile until
a peaceful agreement is signedÂ", writes de Vaal.

As a matter of principle, in our opinion de Vaal should have begun
his publication exactly with this statement. Such kind of experts
are unable to realize or acknowledge that NKR is a fully sovereign
state. NKR is a reality; it is the Artsakh community which has its
own world outlook – tough and appropriate. How is it possible to deal
with the region for years and not understand most obvious things or
at least study the history? According to Karabakh experts not one
empire was overthrown because of having underestimated Artsakh. So,
why there should be made an exception for the West? Other countries
at least had flair to recognize that Artsakh is a subject and it
has its say. Even the USSR, whose power and potential was beyond
all comparison with other Â"pretendersÂ", realized that and created
an autonomous region. Thus, it must be admitted that the attempt of
British Petroleum failed and it was quite predictable.

We should only add that not taking part in the OSCE Minsk Group
efforts to regulate the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Great Britain is
trying to force her interests through various organizations whose
alleged aim is peacekeeping.

–Boundary_(ID_iT+Gk4Jkam/Q0DaHDjs5 TA)–