"SOCHI ROUND" BEHIND, HARD TIMES AHEAD
By Armen Gevorgyan

News.am
13:59 / 01/26/2010

The "Sochi round" of talks over the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh
conflict is behind – it has passed into the eventful negotiation
history. How many rendezvous have been arranged over the last 10-15
years? You cannot list them all: Key West, Paris, Madrid, Lisbon,
Minsk, Bishkek. You can call any city on the world map and you will
find the traces of Karabakh negotiators and their opposite numbers
from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

How many settlement schemes have been proposed? More than you can
count! But no headway has been made.

The mediators’ lack of imagination can hardly be the reason. They
must have tried all the possible ways of resolving the problem –
the ways that would not lead back to the starting point, a new war,
annihilation of the whole people, but that would allow it to live
and develop. But someone dislikes those ways. Someone is trying
to impose his own ways by resorting to threats and force, break
the people’s will, trying to prove that it is not people’s will,
but territorial ownership, that is of importance; that it is not
the people that decide where to live, but the territory "decides"
where a particular people must live and in what conditions. Someone
is seeking to once more pass through the crucible of war!

One thing remains unclear, however: if, 20 years after committing
its first blunder, Azerbaijan is going to commit a second, why does
its leader take part in all the rounds of peace talks, shaking hands
with peace seekers? We can hardly think that the Azerbaijani leader
went to Sochi to "do some snowboarding", knowing everything beforehand!

If not, what is then the sense of Baku’s blasts of propaganda on the
threshold of each meeting? Azerbaijani politicians, including the
President, hardly hope that a people that gained victory in war can
now be afraid of the demagogic statements and let Azerbaijan have
the laurels only because of its oil! We can hardly think that Ilham
Aliyev is calming himself down by stating that Nagorno-Karabakh will
never be independent, but will remain an autonomous region as part of
Azerbaijan, whereas he takes quite different positions at top-level
talks. That is why one gets the impression that Azerbaijan is doing
nothing but blackmailing the peace seekers, talking to them about
peace in the language of war. Obviously, when the peace seekers stop
taking the threats seriously, Aliyev will have to prove his right to
be called President and politician.

Sooner or later the Azeri leader will have to account for the billions
spent on weapons and propaganda and show his and his country’s true
colors – naked aggression.

The Sochi round is down in history now. Armenia sincerely thanked
Russia for her consistent efforts to resolve the problem. Official
Yerevan is well aware that the Gordian knot is not in Moscow nor is
it in Washington. It is here, in the region. Its name is Panturkism,
Panislamism. Armenia and its people are in hostile surroundings. You
cannot conduct a dialogue with your enemy – especially with such one –
if you are weak. Hardly anything has changed in this region over the
last 100 years. Turkey is seeking to join the European family, while
massacring Kurds in its own territory and blocking other sovereign
states’ borders. "Democratic" Azerbaijan, where the son inherits
power from the father, is violating another nation’s rights. Both
Azerbaijan and Turkey, their total population being 80 million, call
3-million-strong Armenia an aggressor that occupied other territories.

But whose territories are they? Are they not Armenian territories if
we view the reality in the light of historical truth?

While expressing its gratitude to Russia and United States, Switzerland
and France for their efforts, Armenia should at the same time expect
a foul stab in the back at any moment. Hardly anything has changed
in the region…