Today, Azerbaijan
Dec 30 2009

Azerbaijani political expert: Armenia acts as a "pawn" in this game

30 December 2009 [12:44] – Today.Az

Day.Az interview with Azerbaijani political expert Vafa Guluzade.

How would you characterize the year 2009 for Azerbaijan?

Starting from major issues such as Azerbaijan’s foreign policy, the
settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict saw no progress. We are
told that a progress in this matter requires the conflicting sides to
change positions. I am totally against this opinion. Azerbaijan’s
position is based on international law and we only require return of
our Armenia-occupied territories. So, it is Armenia who should change
its position, which, unfortunately, has seen no correction lately.

With regard to the OSCE Minsk Group efforts, they continue verbal
"frills", the latest of which was expression of "positive dynamics".
They have literally "infected" the conflicting parties with this word.
As to intensification in the negotiation process, it seems senseless
without a change in positions of the co-chairing countries.

There are no shifts in this context as testified by the U.S. financial
aid to the separatist Nagorno-Karabakh. Washington has a double
policy, calling the Afghans who fight for their independence
terrorists, while not naming the country that have occupied
Azerbaijani lands an aggressor.

On the other hand, the time showed that the U.S.-Turkish cooperation,
which led to signing of the Armenian-Turkish protocols, also does not
benefit Azerbaijan "cooling" the Azerbaijan-Turkey relations. Today
one needs to think what will happen in case of warming relations
between Tehran and Washington. I think it will not benefit our country
at all.

Thus, it turns out that in 2009 there were complications in
Azerbaijan’s relations with Turkey, not everything has been all right
in relations with Iran for long, relations with the EU remains unclear
and Baku has two-fold relations with the United States.

So, 2009 can be characterized as a year of "headaches" for Azerbaijan.
Hopefully, Azerbaijani-Turkish relations will be restored in full and
bilateral relations between Azerbaijan and the United States will warm
finally.

Armenia often warns of complications in settlement of the Karabakh
conflict in case it raised to international organizations like the UN.
How would you comment on these statements?

These are absolutely incompetent statements. It does not matter how
many times the Karabakh issue is raised in international
organizations. Resolving this problem depends on the United States and
Russia while Armenia is a "pawn" in this game. Armenia’s decisions
solve very few issues. Armenians have made their choice by their
"feet" by fleeing from their country to anywhere, just not to stay
there.

To what extent the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is likely to be solved next year?

I see no bright prospects in this regard. Azerbaijan will be pushed to
accept the Madrid principles which provide a veiled loss of the former
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region in exchange for five of the
occupied regions of Azerbaijan (without Kalbajar and Lachin regions).
There is a hypothetical discussion of deployment and percentage of
peacekeeping forces in the conflict zone. Although, I think this
option is unlikely.

But one must not forget that the Minsk conference discussed withdrawal
of Armenian armed forces from Azerbaijani territory,without deployment
of international peacekeeping forces and debating status of Karabakh
only after that.

All this delays resolution of the Karabakh conflict turning the
settlement process into a "long-playing record.’

Z. Ahmadov

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