AZERI EXPERTS UNIMPRESSED BY SOCHI TALKS ON KARABAKH CONFLICT

Turan News Agency
Jan 26 2010
Azerbaijan

Baku, 26 January: Experts in Azerbaijan are cautious in their
assessments of the results of the meeting in Sochi between the
presidents of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Russia for resolving the
Karabakh conflict. "The organizers of the meeting had to disclose
its results. Since this never happened, they [results] do not exist,"
Eldar Namazov, head of the For Azerbaijan public forum, told Turan.

Namazov described as "suprising and strange" the statement by Russian
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the sides set to prepare their
proposals in a few weeks’ time. "This is a purely technical question
that is a function of the OSCE Minsk Group," Namazov said.

He believes that if the president of a major country like Russia
discusses at the meeting not agreements, but recommendations and the
preamble of basic principles, then this is a duplication of the work
of the Minsk Group or a lack of results. "If that is the way it is,
it makes little sense to have this meeting," Namazov said.

He also recalled Armenian Foreign Minister Edvard Nalbandyan’s remarks
that there will be no progress in settlement of the Nagornyy Karabakh
conflict in 2010.

Arastun Oruclu, leader of the Sarg-Qarb [East-West] research centre,
also believes that the meeting was fruitless.

"This was clear before the meeting started. The last four meetings
organized by Russia yielded no results. Moscow’s objective is to
demonstrate that it is impossible to tackle the issue without it,
rather than to resolve the problem," Oruclu said.

He reckons that a partial solution to the problem suits neither
Armenia, nor Azerbaijan and therefore it is not worth expecting a
breakthrough from a meeting in this format.

The existence of the conflicts guarantees Russia’s presence in the
Caucasus. Russia will miss opportunities for preserving its influence
after the conflicts are settled. Hence, it is interested in the
continuation of conflicts, he said.

By holding such meetings Russia also strives to shrink the format of
negotiations to the "trilateral" one, according to Oruclu.