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Key To Region - Nagornyy Karabakh

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  • Key To Region - Nagornyy Karabakh

    KEY TO REGION - NAGORNYY KARABAKH

    Nezavisimaya Gazeta
    Oct 13 2009
    Russia

    On Monday [12 October] Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan arrived in
    Moscow on a short working visit at the invitation of President of
    the Russian Federation Dmitriy Medvedev. According to the official
    press release, the heads of state discussed a wide range of questions
    linked to bilateral and regional cooperation and partnership in bloc
    organizations, a number of international topics, and problems of
    military, economic, and trade cooperation. However, as Nezavisimaya
    Gazeta was told by sources in Yerevan, the main question in the talks
    was a settlement for the Nagornyy Karabakh conflict.

    The presidents of Russia and Armenia last met in Chisinau on Saturday
    [ 10 October] at the CIS summit and exchanged opinions on questions
    of interstate relations. The signing of the Armenian-Turkish protocols
    on normalizing relations also took place

    on Saturday, in Zurich.

    The moving of the reconciliation process between Turkey and Armenia
    to the practical level gives rise to geopolitical changes in the South
    Caucasus. In this light, the visit by the leader of allied Armenia to
    Moscow immediately after the signing of the protocols looks perfectly
    logical, particularly since the realization of a solution to the
    Nagornyy Karabakh problem will imminently rise onto the agenda.

    Serzh Sargsyan devoted his brief conversation with journalists at
    the Zvartnots airport before he flew to Moscow to precisely this issue.

    The Armenian leader gave an assurance that the question of surrendering
    territories had never been discussed, including during the last talks
    with President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev on Saturday in Chisinau.

    "The president of Azerbaijan and I have never discussed this
    question... He (Ilham Aliyev -- Nezavisimaya Gazeta) is dissatisfied
    with the talks in Chisinau because we only discussed two questions --
    the final status of Nagornyy Karabakh and its transition status,"
    Sargsyan announced. At the same time, the president of Armenia
    avoided a direct answer to the question of whether the problem of
    the Nagornyy Karabakh Republic [NKR] would be examined in Moscow with
    Dmitriy Medvedev.

    Meanwhile, Russia's interest in a settlement to Armenian-Azerbaijani
    relations is obvious. In the case of a successful outcome to this
    process, Moscow will perceptibly boost its position in the region and
    increase its peacekeeping rating, which has reeled in the perception
    of the West since August 2008, and Medvedev himself will substantially
    gain political weight -- especially since by distancing itself from the
    process of normalization in Armenian-Turkish relations and basically
    handing them over to the "supervision" of the United States, Russia
    has retained and secured Armenian-Azerbaijani relations.

    "In the Armenian-Turkish context Russia's position has come down
    to not resisting the process of normalization in relations between
    Yerevan and Ankara," head of the Yerevan Center for Globalization and
    Cooperation Stepan Grigoryan considers. In his words, Moscow is not
    as interested in the opening of the Armenian-Turkish border as the
    United States and Europe are, although the boosting of the regional
    role of allied Yerevan and the weakening of those functions for Tbilisi
    is advantageous to it. "In exchange for this non-interference Moscow
    has received the West's agreement to an active role in the Karabakh
    process. Its influence in the OSCE Minsk Group, which is in charge of
    the Armenian-Azerbaijani negotiations, will probably be boosted. This
    is very topical for the Armenian side, since as soon as the protocols
    on normalizing Armenian-Turkish relations were signed, in Ankara Prime
    Minister Erdogan 'recalled' the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan,
    without the restoration of which, in his words, Armenian-Turkish
    relations will not move into the practical phase," Grigoryan told
    Nezavisimaya Gazeta.

    The political scientist considers that during the high level talks in
    Moscow the sides will try to define the possible degree of acceleration
    of a settlement to the Karabakh problem and will be able to "settle"
    Russia's ultimate interests. "It is obvious that Russia has an interest
    in the military component of a possible peacekeeping operation in
    the NKR, which will de facto lead to the expansion of its military
    presence in the South Caucasus. Baku is against this. Neither does
    Stepanakert for the moment consider the appearance of foreign military
    structures on the territory of the NKR necessary. Taking this into
    account, it can be supposed that there will not be any perceptible
    acceleration in the Karabakh settlement for the moment," Grigoryan
    considers. In order to attain the agreement of all the participants in
    the conflict to the entry of precisely Russian peacekeeping subunits
    to the NKR, in Grigoryan's opinion, Moscow will also need to hold
    talks with Turkey, which is all the same starting to reach the stage
    of putting its political interests higher than its ethnic proximity
    to Azerbaijan. "We have a whole set of mutually linked questions,
    so there will not be any sharp acceleration in a settlement to the
    problem of the NKR," Stepan Grigoryan told Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
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