Azerbaijan’s Membership into CSTO will Save Armenia: Analyst

There are real options for converging Baku’s and Yerevan’s positions on the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, said Center for Modelling of Strategic Development Vice-President Gregory Trofimchuk in an interview with Novosti-Azerbaijan.

One of these options, according to him, is Azerbaijan’s membership into the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO). “Armenia regularly makes statements on the issue of security, which may be disrupted after the return of a part of the occupied territories to Azerbaijan. Azerbaijan’s accession to the CSTO can remove Armenia’s doubts, but only after at least two occupied areas actually come under Azerbaijan’s jurisdiction.

“And for Armenia the CSTO will be the main, concrete guarantee that its security will be ensured since Armenia itself is a member of the bloc. The same body also guarantees that there will be no ethnic cleansing in a problematic geographic area. After this first step, the rehabilitation period will begin, the freezing of the situation, the correcting of mistakes. Then, with small steps, they’ll being to move forward,” Trofimchuk explained.

Conducting a referendum to resolve the issue, according to the analyst, will lead straight to war. “Any version of a people’s referendum, be that in Karabakh, Armenia or Baku, leads straight to war. It’s enough to remember how Europe moved toward WWII — through referendums in Austria, Czechoslovakia and so on. No less tragically ended the referendums held on the eve of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Referendums are a quick death for those who initiate them and for those who participate in them. Therefore, referendums should be forgotten altogether,” he said.