UNDERSTANDING INTRICACIES OF U.S. POLICY
By Ivan Gharibyan

NEWS.am
15:20 / 12/09/2009

U.S. President Barack Obama goes on exploring every avenue to go
back on his election pledge next April, when the U.S. is expected to
officially recognize the Armenian Genocide in Ottoman Turkey in 1915.

>From the very first moment, when President Obama clearly showed
he had no intention to at least pronounce the term "genocide"
during his traditional address on April 24, U.S. diplomatic circles
started exerting tremendous efforts to "launch" the Armenia-Turkey
normalization process. Only some progress in this matter would allow
the U.S. Administration to state with innocence that recognizing the
Armenian Genocide would do harm to the fragile normalization process.

The Turkish authorities at once grabbed at the primitive trick by
their principal ally and have recently been constantly referring to
talks with Yerevan as one more argument against the U.S. recognizing
the Armenian Genocide.

April 24 is nearing, and the U.S. President desperately needs progress
in the Armenia-Turkey normalization process. Under the circumstances,
not only the ratification of the Armenian-Turkish protocols signed in
Zurich on October 10, but also the reopening of the Armenian-Turkish
border, can be considered progress.

At this point the major world power has faced serious problems, as
it has obviously overestimated its influence on Turkey. Although
Turkey is the United States’ principal ally in the region, the
Erdogan-headed Government has been implementing a quite independent
policy. New evidence thereof was the Turkish Premier’s recent visit
to Washington, when he showed a blatant disregard for the top-ranking
U.S. officials’ statements on the necessity for Armenian-Turkish
reconciliation without any preconditions.

The Turkish Premier said his say, and the U.S. Administration has now
to exert every effort to have the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settled
as soon as possible, otherwise Turkey will never reopen the border
by April 24, 2010. An obstacle to the settlement is nothing, but the
illogical policy pursued by Turkey’s "small brother", Azerbaijan, which
is seeking to thwart the negotiations by means of bellicose statements.

As a result, referring to U.S. diplomats, Turkish mass media
reported the U.S. Administration allegedly plans to have "some
occupied territories" of Azerbaijan vacated by next April. It is
obvious that the possible withdrawal of Armenian troops from the
security zone round Nagorno-Karabakh is one of the components of
the comprehensive Nagorno-Karabakh peace process. Also, as the
Armenian side has repeatedly stressed, nothing is agreed on unless
all the details are agreed on. So the international community has
to work hard at the key point, namely, determining the final status
of Nagorno-Karabakh – provided it is interested in further radical
geopolitical changes in the region.

Thus, the U.S. Administration has to carry out serious work to
get the only possible, mutually acceptable and fair solution to the
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Otherwise, all the recently exerted efforts
will come to nothing, and the world will once more admit that the
Presidents of the "world’s most democratic state" are not in the habit
of honoring their elections promises, even the firmest ones. Well,
the U.S. is not going to "hurt" its favorite ally, Turkey – or…