Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
April 21, 2004, Wednesday
THE FUTURE OF KARABAKH IN THE HANDS OF MAJOR BUSINESSES[]
SOURCE: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, April 19, 2004, p. 11
by Rauf Mirkadyrov
WASHINGTON IS OUT TO PREVENT NEW HOSTILITIES IN THE KARABAKH CONFLICT
AREA BEFORE THE BAKU – TBILISI – DZHEIKHAN PIPELINE IS TURNED ON
Baku and Yerevan openly discuss the possibility of renewed
hostilities in the Karabakh conflict area for the first time in a
decade. Defense minister of Azerbaijan said last week that a war
between Azerbaijan and Armenia could begin any minute and blamed
everything on the authorities of Armenia that he said were losing
control over the situation and letting the country slide into a
political crisis.
Some staff changes took place simultaneously within the framework of
the Karabakh talks. Elmar Memedjarov, a career diplomat and
ex-advisor to the Azerbaijani Embassy in the United States, became
foreign minister of Azerbaijan. Rudolph Perina, American chairman of
the Minsk OSCE Group for Karabakh, is about to be replaced with
Stephen Mann (US President’s envoy to the Caspian region), according
to US Ambassador to Rhino Harnisch who met with Defense Minister of
Azerbaijan Safar Abiyev not long ago. The diplomat said that it would
probably facilitate the process of settlement and said that US
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (just like official Baku) advocated
a gradual settlement.
Virtually no details on Harnisch’s meeting with Abiyev are available,
indicating serious problems with the Karabakh negotiations. Firstly,
it is not a coincidence that the US ambassador broke every rule in
the book revealing the name of the new American chairman of the Minsk
OSCE Group at a meeting with the defense minister of Azerbaijan.
Staff changes on that level are first disclosed to national leaders
or foreign ministers who are directly in charge of peace talks. It
seems that the United States is afraid that the military may get out
of political control and provoke the new outbreak of hostilities.
Mann’s promotion is the best indication of how the latest
developments in the sphere of the Armenian-Azerbaijani worry the
United States. Unlike Perina and Perina’s predecessor Kerry
Cavanough, Mann knows the region. As the US President’s envoy to the
Caspian region, he had the involved countries agree to construction
of the Baku – Tbilisi – Dzheikhan pipeline and even assured
Kazakhstan’s involvement in the project. The diplomat successfully
tackled the task of directing oil from the Caspian region in the
direction convenient for Washington. As a matter of fact, he bested
his vis-a-vis, Russian President’s envoy Viktor Kalyuzhny.
Mann has established perfect relations with leaders of Azerbaijan,
one of the warring sides, and with all Western oil companies involved
in the region. Perhaps, Washington does want an impetus to the
process o settlement. More likely, however, is that Mann has a task
of preventing a new outbreak of hostilities between Armenia and
Azerbaijan before 2005, the moment when the Baku – Tbilisi –
Dzheikhan pipeline is turned on. After that, security of the pipeline
will become an international affair. The West will never permit the
warring sides another outbreak of hostilities then.
Actually, Vladimir Kazimirov (former Russian chairman of the Minsk
OSCE Group for Karabakh), is convinced that Mann’s experience as US
president’s envoy in the Caspian region will not help him much.
“There are lots of leverages that may be used to prevent an outbreak
of hostilities,” Kazimirov said. “These leverages do not really need
the smell of oil.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
