Epress.am News from Armenia
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton will begin her visit to the South Caucasus tomorrow. Ashton will first visit Baku, then Tbilisi and on Nov. 17 she will arrive in Yerevan. Mainly discussed in Ashton’s meetings with heads of state will be intensifyin the European Union’s role in resolving the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. At the same time, there are rumors that the US is preparing to seize from Russia the role of chief mediator in the Armenia-Azerbaijan negotiations, reports Russian-language daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
The fact that Europe is dissatisfied with the stagnation of the Karabakh process was confirmed by a statement made by MEP Kristian Vigenin, who visited Yerevan recently. After meeting with Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan, Vigenin told reporters: “We believe that the EU should be more involved in the settlement of the Karabakh conflict… We see that the format of the OSCE Minsk Group has not led to any results over the years, and in this regard, something has to change.”
It is important to introduce new players in this process, he said. According to him, this was discussed in the European Parliament and, in particular, replacing the French co-chair with an EU representative was proposed, and it is possible this person could be Catherine Ashton.
The statement made by the European deputy in Yerevan echoes statements made by Azerbaijani political analyst Rasim Agayev to Baku reporters. According to him, the US seeks to bring the Transcaucasus countries out from under Moscow’s influence. To this end, Washington is implementing a project called “Big Caucasus,” which was developed under George W. Bush, that aims to gain a foothold in the region and promote American interests. Given the fact that Georgia is hostile toward Russia, and Azerbaijan’s ruling elite is more inclined toward the West than toward Moscow, there remains only one problem for the US in the region — Armenia, which is Russia’s strategic ally. “Getting it out from under Russia’s influence is a difficult but achievable goal,” believes Agayev.
However, Berlin-based political analyst Ashot Manucharyan believes that to exclude Russia from the Karabakh peace process, in particular, and from the South Caucasus region as a whole is an impossible task.
“Moscow will not abandon the Karabakh issue and will shift the burden of chief mediator on the shoulders of neither the US nor the EU. Moscow denoting its inaptitude in the Karabakh conflict will result in the West ignoring Russia’s opinion in more complex civilized conflicts, such as in North Korea, Iran and Afghanistan,” he said.
Promoting the idea of introducing necessary changes in the format of negotiations that could lead to positive developments, Azerbaijan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Araz Azimov, in an interview with Austrian daily De Standard, said the key to solving the conflict could be “the co-existence of the two communities.” However, Azimov also noted that “The compromise decision Azerbaijan can make for solving the conflict doesn’t involve the transfer of any territory to Armenia.”
The Azerbaijani official’s statement was not left unaddressed in Stepanakert. Nagorno-Karabakh presidential press secretary Davit Babayan, commenting on Azimov’s statement, said that some aspects of the statement are encouraging.
“In particular, we agree with the statement that the solution to the conflict does not involve the transfer of territories to Armenia: The Karabakh conflict is not an Armenian-Azerbaijani territorial dispute, nor even a conflict between Baku and Yerevan, but a conflict between Stepanakert and Baku, which requires direct dialogue,” he said.
As for the possible return of refugees to Nagorno-Karabakh, Babayan continued, the republic’s leadership has never opposed this initiative. “We are ready to accept citizens of Azeri ethnicity under one condition: if they wish to become citizens of NKR and integrate into Karabakh society.”