NK ANALYST: “AFTER THE LISBON SUMMIT RUSSIA BEGAN LOSING GROUND IN THE NK PEACE PROCESS”
Regnum, Russia
May 19 2006
“There has been no significant progress in the settlement of the
Azeri-Karabakh conflict in the last 12 years of truce in the conflict
zone; mostly because the trilateral settlement format Azerbaijan –
Nagorno Karabakh – Armenia ‘departed from life’ in 1997-1998 after the
OSCE Lisbon Summit applied the notorious ‘international law principles’
to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict,” independent Karabakh analyst David
Karabekyan says in an interview to REGNUM.
After that, Russia began gradually losing its initiative, and after
the Lisbon Summit of 1996 “the activity of France and the US, as OSCE
Minsk Group co-chairs, got, if not higher, then, at least, not lower
than that of Russia.” “The US’ growing activity in the post-Soviet
area, the victory of color revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia, the
ongoing withdrawal of Russian troops from Georgia, demands for their
withdrawal from Transdnestr, rising US-Iranian tensions – this all
has urged the ‘unrecognized’ or ‘unrepresented’ states to look anew
at the problem of their security,” says Karabekyan.
He says that after the overthrow of the Abashidze regime in Ajaria,
liquidation of the Russian military bases in Akhalkalaki (Georgia),
completion of preparations for launch of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
oil pipeline, creation of the Azerbaijan-Georgian transport corridor
between the Caspian and Black Sea countries, geo-political arc the
US-Turkey-Ukraine-Georgia-Azerbaijan has closed up near the borders of
Armenia in the south, Belarus – in the west and Russia – in the north.
Karabekyan also notes that, apart from being just promising
financially, the transit energy and transport corridor via Azerbaijan
to Europe has inspired Azeri President Ilham Aliyev so much that he
keeps talking about Azerbaijan’s growing role in the South Caucasus.
“Naturally, such conditions will make it easier for Baku to push its
plan of the conflict settlement, and, sooner or later, Yerevan and
Stepanakert will have to reckon with it,” says Karabekyan.