NICE TO MEET YOU: MOSCOW CAN’T MAINTAIN STATUS QUO OF NAGORNO KARABAKH
by Ivan Sukhov

WPS Agency
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
July 22, 2009 Wednesday
Russia

MOSCOW CANNOT MAINTAIN THE STATUS QUO IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH AS AN
INSTRUMENT OF DEALING WITH BAKU AND YEREVAN ANYMORE; Russia failed
to broker an Azerbaijani-Armenian rapprochement over Nagorno-Karabakh.

Last Saturday, the Kremlin’s press service laconically proclaimed the
Azerbaijani-Armenian negotiations in Moscow to have been constructive
and left it at that.

This taciturn comment was all the media had to be satisfied
with because the leaders refused to meet with the waiting
journalists. Armenian correspondents decided that the Azerbaijani
leader’s demeanor signified displeasure. On the other hand, not one
of the three participants in the talks seemed to have anything to be
pleased with.

Of course, any meeting of the leaders of these two countries is
already a success. Armenia and Azerbaijan are divided by the problem
of Nagorno-Karabakh, the oldest suspended ethnic conflict in the
southern part of the Caucasus.

Nearly half a million Azerbaijanis stampeded out of Nagorno-Karabakh
in the course and after the hostilities – and untold thousands of
Armenians left Azerbaijan. Karabakh had defended its independence. By
1993, the Armenians all but occupied the Azerbaijani districts
surrounding the former autonomy, the ones that had served as the
security zone. Cease-fire agreement finally stopped the bloodshed,
but the actual border between Armenia, Karabakh with the nearby areas,
and Azerbaijan remains a site of regular clashes and skirmishes.

Attention of Russia was focused of late on two other republics nearby,
Abkhazia and South Ossetia. As for Karabakh, official Moscow kept
regarding it as an instrument enabling the Kremlin to apply pressure
to both warring sides, namely Armenia and Azerbaijan. The war in
Georgia in August 2008 compelled Russian politicians to start paying
attention to the Azerbaijani-Armenian latent conflict again.

Neither Baku nor Yerevan was particularly happy to watch the shooting
war in Georgia nearby. Apart from Iran, Georgia is Armenia’s only
gateway into the world. The complications in the Russian-Georgian
relations postponed restoration of normal traffic between Armenia
and southern regions of Russia.

As for Azerbaijan, the war in Georgia plainly showed it the fragile
nature of its strategic oil and gas export route via Georgia to
Turkey and on to the West. It is this oil and gas export that made
Azerbaijan the best industrially advanced country in the southern
part of the Caucasus.

Active rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey meanwhile began last
autumn. These two countries had been also divided by the discord
over the border and the Karabakh enclave (Turkey unequivocally backed
Azerbaijan in the conflict). Even more important, the discord between
Armenia and Turkey is rooted in political evaluation of the massacre of
the Armenians in the then Ottoman Empire in 1915. Granted that these
problems have no easy solutions, it is clear that Armenia and Turkey
will have to do something to bridge the gap between them despite the
resistance to the process put up by nationalists in both countries.

However unexpected it might appear, but the president of Turkey made
his first visit to Yerevan last autumn, paving the way for April 2009
when foreign ministers of the two countries signed the Road Map of
rapprochement in the capital of Armenia. Apart from everything else,
this rapprochement is expected to finally reopen the border between
these two countries. If and when it happens, Russia’s number one ally
in this part of the Caucasus will immediately turn to Turkey.

All these considerations couldn’t help disturbing Moscow. Presidents
Serj Sargsjan, Ilham Aliyev, and Dmitry Medvedev signed the Meiendorf
Declaration in Moscow on November 2, 2008. The document confirmed
the principle of nonrenewal of hostilities and reiterated status of
the OSCE Minsk Group as the only format of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
settlement. Sargsjan and Aliyev met in Moscow on several occasions
again, but without any success. Neither did the meeting after the
races last Saturday become a breakthrough. It should have probably
been anticipated. Aliyev had said in London a couple of days before his
visit to Moscow that Azerbaijan was prepared to give Nagorno-Karabakh
broad powers of an autonomy but never sovereignty.

The problem is, maintaining the status quo in Nagorno-Karabakh as
an instrument of keeping both Yerevan and Baku under pressure is
no longer an option for Moscow. Neither can it openly choose one
side of the fence. Support of Armenia will sour its relations with
Azerbaijan. Support of Azerbaijan will cost Russia its "strategic
ally".

Russia is not to be envied. Refuse to show respect for demands from
Azerbaijani to restore its territorial integrity, and Baku might become
an ardent participant in Nabucco. Comply with its demands and Armenia
will take offence and facilitate rapprochement with Turkey. Neither is
the latter probable without at least some progress in the matter of
the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement. It is possible, in theory,
that the problem of the former security zone, i.e. the Azerbaijani
districts occupied by the Armenians, will be solved but any political
gambit towards this compromise will inevitably reactivate fiercely
nationalist opposition in Armenia. Sargsjan may then find himself in
the shoes of his principal enemy in the presidential race in 2008,
first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosjan.