KARABAKH PRIZE: Armenian opposition warns the president
by Gajane Movsesjan
WPS Agency
July 16, 2009 Thursday
Russia
ARMENIA EXPECTS NO RESULTS FROM THE MEETING BETWEEN ARMENIAN AND
AZERBAIJANI PRESIDENTS; Nothing worthwhile is expected from the
forthcoming meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan
in Moscow.
Presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan Serj Sargsjan and Ilham
Aliyev will meet in Moscow this week-end to discuss the problem of
Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian experts Vremya Novostei approached for
comments said that they did not expect any breakthrough from the talks
and that some meager progress was all that might be expected. Neither
does Moscow expect any dramatic amelioration of the situation, for
that matter. "Well, no signing of documents is planned. Rapprochement
is the principal objective," Presidential Aide Sergei Prikhodko
said. According to Prikhodko, the visitors will meet with each other
and with President Dmitry Medvedev on July 18, presumably on the
Kremlin’s premises. Like some other CIS leaders, Sargsjan and Aliyev
are going to Moscow to watch the Presidential Cup racing.
Regular nature of the meetings between the presidents of Armenia and
Azerbaijan is a factor that certainly instills hopes. Intermediaries
have definitely contributed. As if in order to provide an additional
impetus, the Americans revealed 6 out of 15 basic principles the
foreign ministers of Russia, France, and the United States had
formulated at the OSCE conference in Madrid in late 2007. What
principles were thus revealed stood for a "transition period status"
for Nagorno-Karabakh and a compromise between Armenia and Azerbaijan
(through the return of the occupied lands to Baku, among other things).
"International intermediaries are quite active, these days. As a matter
of fact, the leaders of Russia, United States, and France even made a
joint statement on Nagorno-Karabakh at the G8 summit in Italy. Besides,
some of the principles were revealed… Not that they have been a
secret from specialists, of course, but still… All of that creates
a favorable backdrop for the talks about to take place. And yet,
I do not expect any considerable progress in the foreseeable future
all the same," said political scientist Sergei Minasjan, Assistant
Director of the Institute of the Caucasus (Yerevan).
The Armenian opposition disagreed with Minasjan. "The process of
Nagorno-Karabakh settlement is pushed toward its end and not in the
Armenians’ favor at all. Sargsjan’s subordinates go for unprecedented
concessions which is but treason against the state," the Armenian
National Congress announced in its recent statement.
Replacement of the Russian ambassador in Yerevan in the meantime is the
talk of the day within the Armenian political establishment. Ambassador
Nikolai Pavlov returns to Moscow to make room for another diplomat,
Vyacheslav Kovalenko who represented the Russian Federation in Tbilisi
between July 2006 and 2008 when diplomatic relations between Russia
and Georgia were severed.
Minasjan denied existence of a connection between Kovalenko’s arrival
and the forthcoming talks over Nagorno-Karabakh. "Its relations with
Georgia severed, Russia views Armenia as a country that may become an
intermediary. To some extent, at least. Sending Kovalenko to Yerevan,
official Moscow thought in terms of Georgia rather than of Armenia,"
he said.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
