U.S. WARNS AGAINST A NEW MOSCOW DECLARATION
Hakob Badalyan

Lragir.am
18/01/10

The separate meetings of the OSCE Minsk group American co-chair
Robert Bradtke with the Armenian president and foreign minister
before the visit of the Minsk group co-chairs to the region are quite
interesting. They are interesting also from the point that they are
happening before Serge Sargsyan’s visit to Moscow on January 18. It
was officially stated that Serge Sargsyan is going to discuss the
process of the normalization of the Karabakh issue in particular the
possibility of a Sargsyan-Medvedev-Aliyev trilateral meeting in the
end of January.

Under such circumstances the American co-chair Robert Bradtke visits
Armenia, meets with Serge Sargsyan who was going to leave for Moscow to
discuss the Karabakh settlement and the possibility for a trilateral
meeting. Proceeding from this step of Washington, the Moscow meeting
is taken very seriously beyond the ocean. Washington is not excluded
either to have advised to Armenia not to take the meeting in Moscow
seriously.

The point is that there is a precedent of a trilateral meeting
initiated by Russia which gave birth to the "Declaration of Moscow".

It is difficult to say what practical influence the declaration has on
the process of settlement because no essential events happened after it
which would prove the practicality of the declaration. The Armenian and
Turkish joint statement issued in the night of April 22 as well as the
pre-signing and the signing of the Armenian and Turkish protocols may
be considered such ones. This is in case we presume that the Armenian
and Turkish relations are linked with the Karabakh issue not only for
Turkey but also for the international mediators. But international
mediators refuse their connection. At the same time, they can do that
for diplomatic reasons and in reality they linked them and considered
them "parallel" which they do not hide unlike their "connection".

In this case, it becomes possible that in Moscow something like
the continuation of the Moscow Declaration is being matured which
is tried to be attributed more practicality. In other words, there
was the Moscow declaration, then steps aimed at the Armenian and
Turkish process, and now again an attempt towards the "Moscow" is
being made to register a crucial point in the Armenian and Turkish
relations again. All this is interesting in the sense of how this
chain includes the United States, which, wittingly or unwittingly,
gave Russia the opportunity for the meeting allowing Erdogan who
arrived in December last year in Washington to comment on the context
of the Armenian-Turkish relations with the Karabakh settlement.

The "passivity" of the U.S. after these events, and Bradtke’s visit
to Yerevan on the eve of Sargsyan’s visit to Moscow, indicate the
presence of Washington’s "reservations". Moreover, is not excluded
that it is not just reservations, but also observations. Otherwise, it
is hardly worthwhile to meet with Sargsyan before he travels to Moscow.