AZERBAIJAN CONTENTED WITH PART OF "OCCUPIED TERRITORIES"
By Ivan Gharibyan

Information-Analytic Agency NEWS.am
Oct 21 2009
Armenia

Amid the anti-Turkish hysteria, the Azerbaijani authorities
have started sending the public the first signals concerning
the necessity for revising their radical policy of refusing any
concessions on Nagorno-Karabakh. It is not yet being done by means
of high-ranking officials’ statements. Rather, they are statements
made by experts close to the Aliyev clan and by foreign experts,
with the pro-governmental 1news.az website being the leader.

As usual, the political scientist Vafa Ghukuzade, who is close to the
Azerbaijani presidential administration, has contrived to make most
contradictory statements lately: whether Russia is responsible for
all the misfortunes of the Azerbaijani people by supporting Armenian
"occupants" or the United States is the "number one adversary" due
to its being actively involved in the Armenia-Turkey normalization
process. The leading role is, as usual, being assigned to primitive
blackmail, the only trust of the advocates of present-day Azerbaijani
ideology.

This time the blackmail has taken the form of Azerbaijan’s possible
refusal to participate in the Nabucco project. In his "plain
statements" there was a note of supplication to the international
community in the context of the old song about "occupied territories."

"Azerbaijan’s refusal to transport its gas through Turkey will thwart
all of the West’s efforts to implement the Nabucco project. So if they
are to implement the Nabucco project, the United States and the West
have to get the five occupied regions vacated at the first stage,
with the two others to be vacated later. The five regions are not
enough though," Ghuluzade said thereby betraying official Baku’s
growing concern over the Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. One can
easily catch a radical change in the rhetoric of President Aliyev’s
"political confidant", who only recently made triumphant speeches
about Azerbaijan’s "territorial integrity."

By "pure coincidence", David Satter, visiting scholar at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, voiced the
opinion that only part of the "occupied territories" will be returned
to Azerbaijan. The matter obviously concerns the five regions forming
a security zone round about Nagorno-Karabakh.

The main conclusion that can be drawn from the latest articles
available on the Government-controlled Azeri website is as follows:
being convinced of the irreversible Armenia-Turkey normalization
process and untenable reference points of its short-sighted
and inflexible policy, official Baku is feeling doubts about its
capability to accomplish the tasks, which was once considered
unquestionable. By pestering the Turkish leaders and international
mediators with appeals for settling the Nagorno-Karabakh problem as
soon as possible, the Azerbaijani leaders have been confronted with
their own unpreparedness for taking a realistic view of the intense
negotiations and for resorting painful, but inevitable, concessions.

Obvious signs of a new situation in the Nagorno-Karabakh peace
process caused by serious geopolitical changes in the region aroused
the Azerbaijani Establishments’ serious concern over the concessions
the Armenian side has been ready for – in exchange for referendum on
the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Now President Ilham Aliyev and his
team have to do nothing but blame themselves for the Armenian side’s
concessions being called into question. The only thing for official
Baku to do is to revise its short-sighted policy so as not to be left
with nothing.