Epress.am News from Armenia
The OSCE Minsk Group is fulfilling its mission, which is not the settlement of the Karabakh conflict, since only the Republic of Armenia, the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh are capable of this, said Director of the Yerevan-based Caucasus Institute Alexander Iskandaryan, speaking to reporters in the Armenian capital today.
The task of the Minsk Group, according to the analyst, is to maintain the format of negotiations. “The presidents and foreign ministers should continue to meet and negotiate. And it’s bad that the Karabakh representative is absent from the negotiating table, although Yerevan keeps Stepanakert abreast of the process. Of course, there is a format that is more favorable to Azerbaijan and another that is more beneficial to Armenia, but to change the current situation would be risky and inefficient. The second goal of the Minsk Group is that not only Armenia and Azerbaijan, but also international mediators sit at the negotiating table. And they were fulfilling this mission successfully, even when the negotiations were in jeopardy,” he explained.
According to Iskandaryan, there can’t be any talk of serious changes in the Karabakh issue at this time, during a crisis in Europe, events in the Middle East, and preparation for elections in the mediating countries (the US, Russia and France) as well as in one of the parties to the conflict, Armenia. In the case of Azerbaijan, the analyst said, elections have become redundant.
“The status quo will remain. This is understood by both Yerevan and Baku, as well as by the mediating countries,” he concluded.