NEW KARABAKH WAR WILL DEVASTATE AZERI ECONOMY, SAYS ANALYST

Asbarez
Jan 27th, 2010

Oil fields in Baku pump crude from the Caspian to be processed and sent
to the West through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline. The outbreak
of war would endanger the pipeline and bring an end to oil exports
for Azerbaijan.

BAKU (News.az)-A renewed war over Nagorno-Karabakh will result in a
nightmare scenario for Azerbaijan, grinding its oil-based economy to a
halt and bringing an end to international investment in the country,
according to the head of a think tank centered around former Soviet
issues.

Konstantin Zatulin, the director of the CIS Countries Institute, made
his prediction during an interview with Voice of America focused on
the trilateral talks between the presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan
and Russia held in Sochi on Monday.

Zatulin painted a bleak picture of what lay ahead for Armenia and
Azerbaijan, saying that "he sees no prospects" for the resolution of
the longstanding conflict, mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group.

"Official Baku and Yerevan have different views about the final
results of the current negotiations," he said, predicting that the
impasse could lead only to one side opting to use force to resolve
the situation.

Zatulin noted, however, that success for Azerbaijan in a new war is
"not obvious" and will "cause great economic problems and a pulling out
of international investments for which Azerbaijan is striving today."

Negotiations are better than war, he said they support the level of
trust and preserve hope for the future peaceful way of the conflict
settlement.

The analyst presented a possible scenario in case negotiations
completely break down, describing a situation in which Russia, the
US, and the EU "dictate conditions of a final settlement to Baku
and Yerevan."

But the success of such a move is unlikely, he noted. "First of all
the conflicting parties can refuse to fulfill the provisions of the
leading superpowers and second, the regional superpowers-urkey and
Iran-may declare their own special interest."

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress