Don’t Expect Breakthrough in Karabakh Conflict, Says de Waal

There are no grounds to expect a breakthrough on the Karabakh conflict at the Dec. 1–2 OSCE summit in Astana, said Thoma (or Tom) de Waal, a Senior Associate for the Caucasus at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, in an interview with News.Am.

“It’s the other way around. The negotiations on Karabakh froze and the situation on the frontline deteriorated when the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations was suspended this year. Meanwhile, public opinion in both Azerbaijan and Armenia is against compromise and peace which makes it difficult to reach agreement on the main principles, even if [Azerbaijani President] Ilham Aliyev and [Armenian President] Serzh Sargsyan want to. This means that pressure on the two leaders to reach a peace agreement can come only from outside forces, and the main problem here is that international forces are either not sufficiently interested or do not have sufficient resources to get a peace treaty from the Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Local factors are stronger than geopolitical interests,” de Waal said.

The Carnegie Endowment associate does not consider the possibility of war in the Karabakh conflict zone to be high in the next two or three years, though in the long term, Azerbaijan’s acquisition of arms increases the threat. 

“I am more concerned that incidents on the contact line may become more frequent and cause the deaths of dozens of soldiers, which will terminate the current peace process. As a result, the situation will be more grave and the contact line will become more dangerous. Therefore, I think priority must be given to strengthening the ceasefire regime,” Tom de Waal said.

He said that the current negotiating process was more like conflict management than a peace process.

“A frozen conflict is certainly better than war, but I do not believe that Azerbaijan will leave the conflict frozen for long, at least not without the return of the five districts to the east of Karabakh. Therefore, I think it will be better to take confidence-building measures which will reduce the possibility of conflict.”