AZERBAIJANI EXPERT: MINSK GROUP’S LACK OF REACTION TO ARMENIA’S SILENCE IS SURPRISING

Today
s/67310.html
May 5 2010
Azerbaijan

"The situation now is that Azerbaijan has adopted a peace plan for
settling the Karabakh conflict on the basis of the updated Madrid
principles developed by the OSCE Minsk Group. But Armenia has not done
this yet," Director of the Baku-based Center for Peace and Conflict
Resolution Elkhan Mehdiyev said.

"Position of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chairs is surprising. They do not
make any statements on the matter. Even during their latest visit to
Baku, they did not say anything about it. Negotiations are allegedly
underway. The Azerbaijani side requires an answer from the mediators
and Armenia" he said.

"Frankly, I myself was surprised at the situation," says the expert.

"What will the co-chairs offer now? We are talking about their product
they were working on for the last 2 years! They have developed it for
adoption by Azerbaijan and Armenia. And now they behave as if there
are no documents on the table. But the fact is that one of the sides
has accepted the peace plan while the other side has not. There is
no reaction from the outside either."

As to more powerful states’ ability to influence this process, Mehdiyev
noted that "the main detonator here is Turkey. This country works in
this direction even harder than the parties to the conflict.

Turkey has included this issue in meetings with top leaders of France,
Russia and the U.S."

"This issue will be on the agenda also of the upcoming Medvedev-Erdogan
meeting to take place in May. We expect great results from this
meeting," the expert added.

"On the other hand, there is another reason. Azerbaijan-U.S. ties
cooled to some extent lately as Americans want to separate the issue
of the Armenian occupation of our lands from the Turkish-Armenian
dialogue. This had a very negative impact on Armenian-Azerbaijani
negotiations and inspired Yerevan on an even greater arrogance. And in
the context of the April meetings, Washington seemed to have forgotten
about the peace plan put forward by the co-chairs of the Minsk Group,"
Mehdiyev noted.