{"id":105205,"date":"2011-06-13T13:59:30","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T08:59:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.epress.am\/?p=105205"},"modified":"2011-06-13T14:19:56","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T09:19:56","slug":"expectations-for-kazan-meeting-some-hopeful-others-believe-no-deal-on-karabakh-will-be-signed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/2011\/06\/13\/expectations-for-kazan-meeting-some-hopeful-others-believe-no-deal-on-karabakh-will-be-signed.html","title":{"rendered":"Expectations for Kazan Meeting: Some Hopeful, Others Believe No Deal on Karabakh will be Signed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The foreign ministers of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Russia met behind closed doors in Moscow on Saturday, as international mediators ratcheted up the pressure for a breakthrough in the long conflict over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, writes Ellen Barry in The New York Times<\/span><\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Analysts say a presidential-level meeting scheduled for Jun. 25 is the best opportunity in years to end the stalemate over the territory, an Armenian enclave that sought to break away from Azerbaijan at the end of the Soviet period. The momentum has been driven in large part by President Dmitri A. Medvedev, who has invested his time and prestige in resolving the dispute.<\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s goal for the late-June meeting in Kazan, Russia, is to persuade the sides to agree to the set of \u201cbasic principles\u201d negotiated more than five years ago, said Aleksandr K. Lukashevich, a spokesperson for Russia\u2019s Foreign Ministry. He said international mediators \u2014 Russia, France and the United States \u2014 had clearly expressed the urgency of a deal.<\/p>\n

The foreign ministers made no statements after the meeting on Saturday, but on Friday, a top aide to Azerbaijan\u2019s president said there were \u201cgreat expectations\u201d for the talks in Kazan. Statements from Armenia have been more circumspect, though the country\u2019s foreign minister said on Thursday that \u201cit will be possible to achieve the expected progress if Azerbaijan also gives its consent,\u201d news services reported.<\/p>\n

Passions about Nagorno-Karabakh run so high in Azerbaijan and Armenia that the leaders of both countries run serious risks if it looks like they have ceded ground, said Thomas de Waal, a Caucasus specialist at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington. The framework agreement outlined in the basic principles would allow the return of thousands of Azeris displaced during a six-year war over the territory, which ended with a ceasefire in 1994, and Armenia\u2019s president must persuade his people that ethnic Armenians living there will not be in danger. And because it grants Nagorno-Karabakh an interim self-governing status, Azerbaijan\u2019s president will have to show that he is not compromising territorial integrity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis becomes a dangerous moment in which maybe nothing is happening on the ground, the leaders have stuck their heads over the parapet, and domestic opposition is firing missiles at both of them,\u201d said de Waal. It is especially important, he said, that any deal be followed by tangible progress.<\/p>\n

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the war, and more than a million people, most of them Azeris, became refugees. Armenia says it has had to control a broad buffer zone to protect ethnic Armenians in the enclave but will give it up in exchange for the right guarantees.<\/p>\n

Azerbaijan, which has enormous oil wealth, has ramped up its military spending to more than $3 billion a year and warned that it would go to war if negotiations failed.<\/p>\n

Richard Giragosian, an analyst based in Yerevan, said he doubted that the Kazan meeting would achieve a breakthrough. Originally, the sides were to be presented a one-page document renouncing the use of force, he said. That goal has been replaced by a more ambitious one \u2014 endorsement of the basic principles \u2014 which he says is unrealistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe two sides are simply too far apart, and there\u2019s no political will,\u201d said Giragosian, director of the Regional Studies Center. \u201cWhen I was in the US government I worked on the Madrid talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and this has become almost as intractable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Analysts say a presidential-level meeting scheduled for Jun. 25 is the best opportunity in years to end the stalemate… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97608,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tstyn_error":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[65942,10265,10665,27095,13901],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/epress.am\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}